
JACK! 

HEATON 

GOLD SEEKER 


A- FRE0E R! CK- COLLI NS 


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JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


Wonders of Natural History 
Jack Heaton, Gold Seeker 
Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator 
Jack Heaton, Oil Prospector 
The Boys' Airplane Book 
The Boys’ Book of Submarines 
Handicraft for Boys 
Inventing for Boys 
Farm and Garden Tractors 




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“HIS FIRST EFFORTS AT SNOWSHOEING WERE LAUGHABLE IN 

THE EXTREME.” 










— Page 115 


JACK HEATON 

GOLD SEEKER 


^ BY 

A’^FREDERICK COLLINS 

Author of Inventing for Boys^** Handicraft for 
Boys** **Jack Heaton^ Oil Prospector y** etc. 

WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
MORGAN DENNIS 



NEW YORK 

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 




Copyright, 1921, by 
Frederick A. Stokes Company 

A ll Rights Reserved 


DEC -3 1921 


Printed in the United States of America 


§)CI.A627948 




THE CORYS 


WITH PLEASANT MEMORIES OP 
ALASKAN NIGHTS 



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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I How THE Trouble Started .... 1 

II Ho ! FOR THE Gold Country ! . . . .17 

III On the Edge of Things 38 

IV When Bill and Black Pete Met . . 63 

V Outfitting at Circle 80 

VI Mush, You Huskies, Mush .... 101 

VII In Winter Quarters 123 

VIII On the Arctic Circle 139 

IX The Land of the Yeehats .... 158 

X On the Trail of Gold 179 

XI Gold, Gold, Nothing but Gold . . . 197 

XII Back to the Haunts of Men .... 216 



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LIST OP ILLUSTRATIONS 


‘His efforts at snowshoeing were laughable in 
the extreme’’ Frontispiece 

FACING 

PAGB 

‘It was a team of dancers” 70 

‘Black Pete did pull the trigger every chance 
he got” 76 

‘ ‘I’ve conclooded they’ve got human brains just 
the same as you and me’ ” 136 

‘ ‘These Indians cached the gold in a pile of 
stones’ ” 166 

‘Bill drew his six-gun and emptied it into the 
head of the great beast” 186 

‘ ‘ Gold ! Gold ! Nothing but gold ! ! ! ’ ” . . 214 

‘The ungainly craft pitched and rolled about 
like a piece of cork” 232 


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JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 






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JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

CHAPTER I 

HOW THE TROUBLE STARTED 

‘T^TELL glory be! an^ if it ain’t Jack 
V V Heaton hisself. An’ right glad am I 
to see yuli, Jack. Bill will be mighty glad, too, 
for he’s that bugs on goin’ to South America 
for them di-am-onds. Sure he’s been talkin’ 
o’ nothin’ else these last two weeks gone Satur- 
day. An ’ how are yuh anyhow, J ack % ’ ’ 

It was Mrs. Adams, Bill’s warm-hearted and 
courageous mother, who had answered the bell 
•and was greeting Jack in this whole-souled 
fashion. 

Since the boys had returned from Mexico and 
had come into possession of all that money for 
the services they had rendered the American 
Consolidated Oil Company, Inc., the Adamses, 
mother and son, had risen in the world not only 
figuratively but very literally, for instead of 
living in a shanty hard by the gas-house under 


2 


JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


the viaduct which spans Manhattan Street, they 
had moved into a five room apartment on Clare- 
mont Avenue — and a front apartment overlook- 
ing the Hudson River at that. No wonder, 
then, that Mrs. Adams was emitting her good 
nature in all directions like rays of radium and 
that of all persons Jack was an especial target 
for them. 

‘^Bill’s in the parlor. Jack; go right in,’^ she 
said with emphasis on the parlor^ for it was the 
only one she had ever been the mistress of in 
all her hardworking life. 

‘‘Well, Bill, what do you think youTe doing, 
getting ready to go after a yegg or rehearsing 
for a movie r’ asked Jack as he reached the 
front room, which by the grace of landlords and 
popular usage is known as the parlor, where he 
found his pal engaged in the gentle pastime of 
snapping a six-gun. 

Bill cut short his exercises with the weapon 
that had seen such hard service in Mexico so re- 
cently and he laughed lightly, though no one ex- 
cept his closest friends would have been aware 
of it. 

“Nary one. Jack, but IVe had one o’ them 
hunch things that you used to get and it’s the 


HOW THE TROUBLE STARTED 3 

one best bet as bow me and yon are goin’ to the 
wilds o’ the Amazon and capture some o’ them 
chunks 0’ mud similar like and appertainin’ to 
the one you wears on your mitt. So I was just 
limberin’ up my trigger finger a bit with a little 
action. ’ ’ 

“Oh, you were, were you,” remarked Jack 
with a mild touch of sarcasm in his voice. 

“Yes, an’ I was just thinkin’ about ’phonin’ 
you to find out how soon we could get under 
way. You see, I haven’t done a tap to make a 
dollar since our landfall and owin’ to the high 
cost o’ livin’ — we’re over two hundred feet 
above Manhattan Street now — my piles’ nosin’ 
down like a submarine and it’ll soon be restin’ 
on the bottom and we ’ll be back where we come 
from. So I’m askin’ you, not only as man to 
man but as my pal, when do we start?” 

“We don’t head that way this time,” replied 
Jack, “we head north, with a capital N.” 

“Whad’a mean we head north?” asked Bill 
in utter amazement. 

‘ ‘ That ’s exactly what I came over to see you 
about. Bill. I’ve had half-a-dozen jobs offered 
me since we came back but routine work is 
entirely out of my line so what’s the use in wast- 


4 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

ing some one^s else good money and my own 
good time. No, IVe tried it and I can^t be a 
good man Friday for any business concern — 
not even for my dad^s. 

‘^So you see you and I are in the same class — 
everything going out and nothing coming in and 
IVe been wondering a lot lately what we could 
scare up that would make a noise like a million 
dollars. Say Bill, did you ever read Jack Lon- 
don’s ‘Call of the Wild’?” Jack put the 
question without notice. I 

“ ‘Call o’ the Wild’?” mused Bill, turning | 
the phrase over in his dome of thought; “I’ve | 
heard all kinds o’ calls o’ wild men an’ wild f 
women but never do I remember any wild call I 
by this blokie Jack London. Who is this guy I 
anyway?” 

“There’s no use talking to a fellow like that,” 
thought Jack, but then, as in dozens of other im 
stances in the past, he patiently explained who 
Jack London was and repeated the tale as told i 
by that past master of fiction, for the benefit of 
his less well-read pal. ^ 

“Now the point I’m driving at is this,” he 
went on. “ J ack London tells us that white men i 
who were prospecting in the land of the YeeJiats, j 


HOW THE TROUBLE STARTED 5 

a tribe of Indians in the gold country of Alaska, 
found diggings where there was gold^ gold, 
nothing hut gold, I tell you, and they packed it 
in moosehide sacks so that they could get it back 
to chdlization. Then the Yeehats came upon 
and killed them and the shining yellow metal fell 
into their hands. The gold must still be up 
there, and you canT dispute it either.’^ 

At this recital BilTs big blue eyes bulged out 
like those of a spider watching a fly. He had 
caught the drift of what Jack was saying and if 
there is any one thing that will set an inert 
imagination to functioning quicker or fix the 
attention of the human mind faster than 
another it is the mordant of seeking out this 
precious metal that we call gold. Then he 
blinked his eyes and shook his head. 

‘Tt sounds to me,^^ he said finally, which in 
the lingo of the cowboy, means that he had his 
doubts. ‘Tf this is a yarn this London feller 
wrote how do we know that he didnT make up 
the Yeehats and the gold just like he made up 
the rest of it,^’ Bill wanted to know, and 
not without reason. 

‘Tfll tell you how. That book was given to 
me for a birthday present when I was about 


6 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


ten years old and whenever I wanted to read a 
good story I took it up just as everybody, from 
the rag-picker to the president, re-reads 
‘Robinson Crusoe’ and ‘Treasure Island.’ So 
one fine day, not long after we got back from 
the oil-fields I spied the book and read it again ; 
then all of a sudden this ending about the Yee- 
hats and the gold in sacks struck me that there 
might be some truth lurking behind the fiction 
like a greaser behind a giant cactus or a Siwash 
behind a totem pole.” 

“But how can we find out for sure?” 

“I have found out already. I wrote to the 
Secretary of the Bureau of Ethnology at Wash- 
ington and to the Minister of the Interior of 
Canada, and they sent me handbooks that tell 
all about the Indians of Alaska and the Yukon 
Territory and I’ve got the real dope on them.” 

Bill had a high regard for Jack’s way of bor- 
ing into things and this scheme of going to the 
governments for information about the Indians 
up there in the far Northland seemed to his un- 
trained mind to approach very closely to a high 
order of genius. Still he was not entirely con- 
vinced. 

“That shows that the climax of London’s 


HOW THE TROUBLE STARTED 7 

book relating to the Yeehats is straight from the 
shoulder, doesn’t it?” Jack wound up. 

^‘That part about the Yeehats is all right but 
how about the gold? Because a tribe of In- 
dians called the Yeehats lived up there doesn’t 
say that pioneer prospectors actually found the 
nuggets, got it, piled it up in sacks ready to 
bring back where they could spend it and then 
were killed off by the Indians. Mind you. Jack, 
I’m not sayin’ as how it couldn’t have happened 
but I’m only sayin’ as how I’d like to know for 
sure afore we goes, see?” 

‘‘Well first of all there’s the Yeehats — ” Jack 
began to explain all over again. 

“That part about the Yeehats is all 0. K.; 
there’s no blinkin’ at facts. No one I’ll say, no 
not even a bookmaker could think up such an 
outlandish name as Yeehat even to splice it to a 
redskin for a name, but any one who couldn’t 
think about gold in chunks would be lonesome if 
he had a brain,” argued Bill. 

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” called out 
Jack. “First of all never call a man who 
writes books a bookmaker. A man who puts 
his pen to paper and writes down various things 
for other folks to read is a maJcer of hooks while 


8 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


a man that takes bets at a race track is a boo A:- 
maJcer. Now don’t get these two professions 
mixed up again.” 

‘‘The trouble with you, Jack, is that you can’t 
see the woods because o’ the trees, as you used 
to tell me down in Mexico when I picked you up 
on some point that didn’t have anything to do 
with the case. What’s the diff I’d like to know, 
whether he was a maker o’ books as you calls 
him or a bookmaker as I calls him. Well go on 
with your ratkillin ’. ’ ’ 

“What I was going to say when you side- 
tracked me was that when a writer writes a book 
every idea that goes into it really comes from 
some outside source and consequently all this 
stuff that we call inspiration and imagination is 
more or less bunk. This being true, I hold that 
what London wrote about the prospectors, the 
gold they found, the moosehide sacks of it they 
piled up and the Yeehats, were not just mere 
fleeting fancies which were conjured up in his 
brain to serve his purpose for the storv^ but 
hard and fast facts that he had heard about 
when he was up above there in Alaska.” 

“I knows what you say and I guess I knows 
what you’re talking about, but as against the 


HOW THE TROUBLE STARTED 9 

book that tells about the Yeehats and the sacks 
0 ’ gold in the land where the rainbow ends give 
me the straight tip on the di-am-onds that Jack 
Heaton got from the cannibal princess where 
the rainbow begins,’’ plugged in Bill, still bent 
on the diamond project. 

‘ ^ Don ’t you see Bill it will take a mint of mon- 
ey to outfit that diamond hunting expedition — 
why we ’d have to take a small army with us to 
cope with those Amazonian savages while as I 
told you before they’re all Christianized, peace- 
loving folks in the far north — ^too cold to be any- 
thing else. Why we couldn’t begin to finance 
this diamond proposition between us even if we 
put every dollar we have to our names in it,” 
Jack drove his argument home and he could see 
that the force of his logic and oratory was be- 
ginning to have the desired effect on his hard- 
headed pal. 

‘‘Couldn’t you get the directors of the Amer- 
ican Consolidated Oil Company to take a flyer 
and back us in the di-am-ond venture,” further 
persisted Bill. 

“I might be able to get them to see it but 
those old four-per-centers are long on sure 
things and very short on anything that looks 


lo JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


like a gamble. I’d hate to have any of them go 
into anything with us that was not as sure of 
succeeding as tomorrow’s sun is sure of rising, 
for if we ever went down there and failed to 
bring back a boat load of diamonds as large 
as the Koohinoor, or Mountain of Light as it is 
called, they’d think they’d been stung by a nest 
of hornets and if we didn’t bring back any at 
all they’d want to throw us into the Atlantic 
Ocean.” 

‘‘They’re sure enough dead-game sports,” 
Bill commented sadly, “but there’s one thing 
certain and that is if I don’t make a ten-strike 
soon I’ll have to get a job as a longshoreman 
and me mudder and me ’ull be movin’ down to 
the shanty. Get me?” 

“As a longshoreman only gets ten dollars a 
day for six or eight hours’ work I guess the job 
at that might net you enough to keep the coyote 
from sleeping in the vestibule of your apart- 
ment. If I wasn ’t too heavy for light work and 
too light for heavy work I’d get a job on the 
docks myself. As things now stand I’m going 
to Alaska and I’ll bring back so much gold that 
if I threw it on the market there ’d be a slump in 
the price of it,” orated Jack boastfully, as he 


HOW THE TROUBLE STARTED ii 


rubbed his hands together in pleasurable antic- 
ipation like a miserable young Shylock. But 
the magic of gold is apt to make misers of even 
the most generous folks. 

‘^Yuh lads come now and have a bite to eat/’ 
sang out Mrs. Adams cheerily and the two 
youngsters went through an arched hole in the 
wall that connected, yet separated the parlor 
from the dining room, though this may sound a 
bit paradoxical. The latter room was dec- 
orated with a plate rail around the wall and a 
great vari-colored dome lamp hanging from the 
ceiling. 

Under the lamp was a table laid with a cloth 
as white, silver as bright and china as fine as 
would be found. Jack opined, up or down the 
Avenue or even over on Riverside Drive. Bill’s 
mother was almost as proud of her new home 
and its fixtures as she was of her boy and that is 
saying all of it. As for Jack, why she thought 
he was the smartest boy in the world ; yes, she 
truly did, and whatever he said went with her. 

Their apartment was tastily furnished and 
comfortable, and he was glad to know that he 
had been, in a measure, indirectly responsible 
for it. It has often been said that travel is the 


12 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


great educator but the possession of money goes 
a mighty long ways toward making gentlemen 
out of coal heavers and ladies out of scrub 
women. True there was still some room for 
improvement in the way Bill and his mother 
handled ^‘English as she is spoke but no 
improvement was needed in their hearts. 

‘‘So yuh lads are goin’ to South America for 
di-am-onds, are yuh,’^ said Mrs. Adams when 
they were seated. “Well, it ^ud be a fine and 
ge-glorious thing if you’d fetch home a couple 
of scuttles of them baubles and throw them to 
those as can atf ord ’em at so much per throw, ’ ’ 
and her eyes reflected the happy thought which 
she had voiced, as a Kimberly blue-white stone 
reflects the light of the sun. ‘ ‘ But do yuh know 
Jack,” she added pensively, “I’d a deal ruther 
have me boy Bill livin’ with me in the 
shanty than to have him riskin’ his young 
life down there on the equator with those man- 
aters.” 

“You can rest easy in your mind on that 
score, Mrs. Adams,” Jack assured her, “for 
I’ve nearly persuaded Bill to give up this South 
American venture and join me in an expedition 
to the Alaskan gold fields, to search for a few 
sacks of nuggets.” 


HOW THE TROUBLE STARTED 13 

‘Tlasker, Ilaskerf No, I never heard of the 
place before. It must not have been on the map 
when I went to school,’^ thought Mrs. Adams 
out loud. 

‘‘You’ve heard of the Yukon?” suggested 
Jack. 

“Yukon, Yukon? I can’t say that I have, 
but,” and her eyes brightened as though she 
had solved a jigsaw puzzle, “I have heard of 
the Klondike.” 

“That accounts for it then,” said Jack, “for 
the Klondike is a gold district and it is named 
from the Klondike River which it is on. The 
Klondike River is in the Yukon Territory, 
which belongs to Canada, and this is directly 
east of Alaska. The Klondike River is really 
only a stream, perhaps not over a hundred feet 
wide, but so rich were the early gold fields there 
that practically all of the Yukon Territory 
and a part of Alaska to boot has been called the 
Klondike country. Such is the fame and power 
of gold.” 

“We own Rasker, don’t we Jack?” Bill 
wanted to know. 

“Yes, though she used to belong to Russia 
but the U. S., bought her about fifty years ago 
for seven million, two hundred thousand dollars. 


14 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

Since then she has produced three hundred mil- 
lion dollars worth of gold. Some bargain, what 
say, BillV’ 

^T^ll say it was,’^ replied his pal. 

‘Tt came about this way,’^ continued Jack, 
‘‘when she was owned by Russia she was a los- 
ing deal for that country because in the first 
place she was too far away from the seat of 
government and there was no wire or wireless 
communication at that time between them ; and 
in the second place Russia hadn’t any more of a 
notion as to how to govern her than she has of 
governing herself now. 

“When the Civil War Was on Russia was a 
good friend of the Union and helped us in every 
way she could, even to loaning us her warships. 
As Russia wanted to dispose of Alaska and 
Uncle Sam wanted to pay something for the ser- 
vices she had rendered, Mr. Seward, who was 
Secretary of State in President Lincoln’s Cab- 
inet, bought the territory, which was then con- 
sidered entirely worthless, from her. 

“The International boundary line that 
divides Alaska from Canada was in dispute 
between the United States and Great Britain 
almost from the time we got her from Russia 


HOW THE TROUBLE STARTED 15 

but neither country did any worrjdng over it for 
Alaska was not supposed to be worth arguing 
about. But when gold was discovered on the 
Yukon River in 1896 and at Cape Nome in 1898 
there was a great stampede, just as there was to 
California in ’49. Then it was that both the 
United States and Great B^ritain got busy and a 
commission met in London, England, in 1903 to 
settle the matter, which was done to the satis- 
faction of both countries.” 

‘ ‘ How far away are these gold fields that you 
land Bill are goin’ toU’ Mrs. Adams asked; 
‘‘are they as far away as the di-am-ond fields 
of South America U’ 

“I should say about the same distance, Mrs. 
Adams, and that is in the neighborhood of some 
five thousand miles.” 

“It’s sure some little ways off,” chipped in 
BiU, “but distance doesn’t count; what we 
wants is the yellow butter, hey Buddie ? ’ ’ 

“That’s what we’re after; other folks have 
found it and we stand as good a chance as they 
did. Are you with me. Bill 1 ’ ’ 

“It sounds to me, Jack, but I’ll go with youse 
to Ilasker on your hunch even if we have to 
walk back.” 


i6 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


‘^Good!^’ ejaculated Jack; guessed you 
would from the start. And so you see all of 
this six-gun practice is tommyrot, for the men of 
the frozen north are different from those of the 
hurnt-up south, for whether they are Americans, 
French-Canadians, Indians or half-breeds, they 
are all white men — ^white at heart — and you’ll 
never have any use for a side arm up there.” 

‘Tt must be a orful nice country, but if you 
don’t mind I’m going to tote mine along just the 
same.” 

‘^Then it’s all settled, is it. Bill!” 

‘‘I’m right there, pal o’ mine, every time.” 

The boys struck hands and their new adven- 
ture was on. 


CHAPTER II 


ho! for the gold country! 

N OW that IVe declared myself in on this 
game I wants to know something about 
how it is supposed to be played,’^ said Bill, who, 
having once thrown his pet scheme overboard 
went into the new one heart and soul. How big 
a country is this here Ilasker and to what part 
do we hikeP’ 

Now Bill was like lots of other born and bred 
‘‘Noo^’ Yorkers in that wherever there was an 
a on the end of a word he invariably substituted 
er for it. As BilPs mother had excused her- 
self and made her exit, Jack took it ujjon him- 
self to set his pal to rights. 

‘‘Not Ile-ash'-her, Bill, but A-las'-ha; get 
that f A-las'-ka ! ’ ^ 

“All right, A-las'-Jcer then; have it any way,’^ 
groused Bill who, though he always wanted to 
know the right of every thing and had insisted 
time and time again that Jack correct him when- 
ever he said or did anything that was not 
17 


i8 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


accordin’ to Hoyle,” as he put it, still lie was 
a little peeved when his pal did so, and in this 
respect he was not unlike the common run of 
folks whether of low or high degree. 

‘Tt’s a larger country than you’d think. 
Here are two maps of her that I’ve brought 
along,” said Jack as he produced, unfolded and 
spread the large sheets on the floor. This done, 
both he and Bill dropped to the correct prone 
position for shooting — that is lying flat on their 
stomachs with their faces downward — a position 
of great value in skirmishes on the border, but 
one seldom needed in civilized New York, unless 
it be to size up a map to the best advantage. 

“This smaller one will give you an idea of 
how big she really is,” continued Jack; “it 
shows Alaska laid on top of the United States, 
that is compared with her. You see the main 
part of her is nearly square and she is hemmed 
in by the Pacific and Arctic Oceans all round 
except on her eastern boundary which is the 
Yukon Territory of Canada. 

“If you lay the square part of Alaska over 
the middle part of the United States as this 
map shows, it will cover about all of Illinois, 
Wisconsin, Montana, Iowa, Missouri, North and 


HO! FOR THE GOLD COUNTRY 


19 


South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Okla- 
homa; then that handle of coast land, which is 
less than a hundred miles wide and some five 
hundred miles long, extends southeast along the 
western edge of Canada and this strip would 
reach clear across Kentucky, Tennessee and 
Georgia to the Atlantic Ocean, while pushing 
out to the southwest is the Alaska Peninsula and 
beyond it the Aleutian Islands. 

‘^The peninsula is nearly five hundred miles 
long and the islands are strung out for another 
five hundred miles or more, so that the tail end 
of them would touch the Pacific Ocean in Cali- 
fornia. You see for size, Texas, which we think 
is a pretty big state, isnT in it with Alaska.’’ 

‘‘It’s almost big enough to get lost in,” 
reflected Bill dryly. 

“Now this large one is a government map of 
Alaska and I’ll show you exactly where we are 
headed for. See that red cross I’ve marked 
there just below the Arctic Circle on the Big 
Black River? Well, that’s our destination and 
when we reach it we’ll be in the land of the Yee- 
hats. At any rate that is where they once lived, 
for from what I have gathered they were wiped 
out of existence some years ago. Once we get 


20 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


into their country it up to us to find out where 
the gold is cached/ 

^‘But suppose the Yeehats, or some other 
tribe of Indians, are still there and that they Ve 
got the gold corralled, what thenT’ Bill wanted 
to know. 

^‘Oh well, wedl have to treat with them 
according to the exigencies of the case. The 
first thing we must do though is to get there, 
the next is to locate the gold and when this pre- 
liminary but important work is done I think we 
can safely say that it is ours.^’ 

‘‘Ours not because we found it first but be- 
cause we found it last,’’ Bill added to clinch the 
ownership. 

‘ ‘ Exactly, or words to that effect. ’ ’ 

“Must be awful cold up there,” suggested 
Bill as his eyes wandered around the sub-Arctic 
region on the map. 

“In summer it’s a mighty pleasant place but 
in winter it does get a little chilly, for sometimes 
the bottom nearly drops out of the thermometer 
and the quicksilver falls to fifty, sixty and even 
seventy degrees below zero; but you don’t mind 
a little thing like cold weather do you ? ’ ’ 

^Prounounced cashed, and means hidden purposely. 


HO! FOR THE GOLD COUNTRY 21 


‘‘No/’ replied Bill thoughtfully, “but I 
kicked all last winter to the superintendent of 
this here apartlnent buildin’ because the heat 
was only sixty-eight degrees while I likes it 
about seventy-two degrees. If I’d a-known we 
was goin’ on this here trip to the frigid zone I’d 
a-told him to bank the fires, or let ’em go out 
entirely, so I’d get used to it. Lettin’ that be 
as it may, what kind of an outfit do we want and 
do we get it here or when we gets up into that 
blarsted country?” 

“We’ll take our rifles and I suppose we ought 
to have a shot-gun for small game, and while, as 
I have said before, the inhabitants, whatever 
may be their color or country, are all peace abid- 
ing folks still we ought to take our six-guns 
along so that we can protect our gold when we 
get back to civilized lands again.” 

“An’ we’d better take our thermos bottles, 
solid alcohol cookin’ outfit, flash lamps, com- 
passes and a pair of pliers with us, not for- 
gettin’ me mouth-organ,” put in Bill. 

“By all means,” allowed Jack; “as for the 
rest of it we can find out exactly what we need 
in the v/ay of rations and equipment when we 
reach Dawson or Circle City. We don’t want 


22 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


to overload ourselves but there must be a-plenty 
of the necessaries, for, the way I figure it, well 
probably have to stay the best part of a year in 
those parts/’ 

‘‘When do we leave for this promised land o’ 
gold and sixty degrees below zero?” inquired 
impatient red-headed Bill. 

“It’s about the right time of the year for us 
to be pilgriming now,” returned his partner; 
“that’s why I’m here.” 

“How long will it take us to get up there?” 

“Oh, about three weeks or so if we make 
connections and don’t lose too much time on the 
way. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Then I takes it the weather ’ll still be warm 
when we arrives. We ’ll get a canoe, or maybe a 
couple o’ them, and paddle up this Big Black 
River until we comes to the land of the Yee- 
hats,” suggested Bill. 

“No, that’s not my idea of it at all. You see. 
Bill, so much of the country where we are going 
is low that it is more or less wet all the time 
and it would make traveling overland in summer 
with our outfit a hard game. The way I’ve fig- 
ured it out is that we ought to start from Circle ^ 
City when winter sets in and travel by dog- i 


HO! FOR THE GOLD COUNTRY 23 

sled; then we can go up or down rivers, over 
them, cut cross country, yes, to the North Pole 
if we want to, and without any hard work on 
our part. 

‘‘Winter sets in early up there and by the 
tilme we reach Circle, get our outfit, learn the 
lay of the land, hear what all the old timers 
have to say and the first snow begins to fly, 
wedl be just about ready to strike out.’^ 

Bill shoved his hands in his pockets, went 
to the window and focused his eyes on a great 
warship that lay at anchor in the Hudson. He 
was wondering, not about the craft for he knew 
all about her and every other kind afloat; he 
likewise knew about some of those craft that 
navigated the land as for instance hawses, but 
this traveling in winter in search of gold with 
dog-sleds was a deep mystery to him. 

“In winter the goldfll be snowed under and 
we’d never find it I’m a-thinkin’,” he said 
thoughtfully. 

“Take it from me. Bill, wherever the gold has 
been cached there will be signs that will point 
out the place as plain as the nose on your face. 
All we’ve got to do is to find the signs — uncover- 
ing the gold will be easy,” argued Jack. 


24 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

^Tt sounds to me, Buddy, but if we’re goin’, 
the sooner the quicker says L” 

^^The Twentieth Century Limited leaves the 
Grand Central Station at 2 :45 in the afternoon 
and pulls into the LaSalle Street Station at 
Chicago the next morning in time so that we can 
make connection with the North Coast Limited 
of the Burlington Route which carries a North- 
ern Pacific sleeper through to Seattle. How 
about leaving to-morrow afternoon?” 

‘‘All to the good; that’ll give me time to see 
me goil and tell her I’m goin’ to Ilasker,” for 
Bill, be it known had become very much smitten 
with Vera Clair, the little blond telephone girl 
down in the office of the American Consolidated 
Oil Compcmy, And Vera, who could roll the 
number three under, over, through and above 
her tongue with the best of operators, and who 
also lived in Harlem, thought quite well of Bill, 
too. 

“If you say that,’' warned Jack, “Miss Clair 
will think you are going to ask her a very im- 
portant question and you might find yourself 
in a somewhat embarrassing position.” 

“What d’you mean ‘ ’barrassin’ position,’ ” 


HO! FOR THE GOLD COUNTRY 25 

questioned Bill sLarply, blinking the while at 
Jack. 

‘‘Why she might think you meant you were 
going to pop the question 

“Put the pedal on that soft stuff right where 
you are, or I’ll make youse put up your dooks, 
see Buddy.” 

“Then say A-las-Jca, as I told you before, and 
you’ll be on the safe side,” again explained 
Jack. 

“All right, A-las-ker then,” Bill attempted 
once more and Jack gave up trying to teach him 
how to pronounce it- as a bad job. 

The next afternoon the boys met at the Grand 
Central Station with their big suit cases and 
each carried in his money-belt two hundred 
dollars in cash and a draft on the National Bank 
at Skag^vay for a thousand dollars. It was not 
long before they were on board the Twentieth 
Century Limited and were being whirled 
through the tunnel under New York and up to 
Mott Haven; there the powerful electric lo- 
comotive gave way to a gigantic steam locomo- 
tive and they were soon running along the edge 


26 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


of the historic Hudson River headed toward the 
field of their new endeavors. 

At the sight of the Palisades Bill could no 
longer restrain his aesthetic feelings — oh yes, 
Bill had them too, and he knew the beautiful 
when he saw it. 

‘T tell youse the Hudson has got them all 
faded, Jack. IVe seen ^em all includin’ the 
Schuylkill at Philadelphia and they might as 
well get often, the map.” 

<< There are three rivers you haven’t seen yet. 
Bill, and these are the Mississippi, the Yukon 
and the Amazon. When you have seen these 
great streams you’ll be in a better position to 
judge the merits of the Hudson.” 

‘ ‘ This position right here in seat 2, car 30 is 
good enough for me to size up the Hudson. 
Just as Noo York is the onliest town in the 
world so the Hudson is the onliest river on the 
map. Somebody oughter give Mr. H. Hudson 
a medal for havin’ discovered it; an’ when we 
come back, richer ’n Rockerfeller, I’ll donate one 
to him that is twenty-four carats fine.” 

Jack had the porter fix a table between the 
seats and laid out his time-tables of the three 
railroads that were to carry them across the 


HO! FOR TFIE GOLD COUNTRY 27 

continent. Then for Bill’s enlightenment and 
his own pleasure he traced the route they were 
to make to Seattle and thence on up to Circle 
City, Alaska. 

‘Tjet’s see, we reach Chicago to-morrow 
morning and change cars there. Then we ’re in 
for a long ride, for it will take us about three 
days and nights to make the trip. We’ll get in- 
to Seattle next Saturday morning some time. 
Our boat leaves Seattle the following Monday 
morning and this will give us all the time we 
want to see Seattle.” 

‘^Now look up this boat trip from Seattle 
to Skagway,” said Bill. 

‘^We take the S.S, Princess Alice and sail up 
through Puget Sound until we reach the 
northern end of Vancouver Island, when we 
come to the open sea; then we run througli 
Hecate Strait, between the Queen Charlotte 
Islands and the Province of Columbia, when 
we pass through Dixon Entrance into Clarence 
Strait and are in Alaskan waters. Farther on 
when we get to Juneau we’ll begin to see some- 
thing that looks like real scenery for that’s the 
beginning of the great glaciers.” 

‘H’m not so keen on seein’ scenery as I am 


28 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


on seein’ gold,’’ vouchsafed Bill, whose result- 
ant financial success in the Mexican expedition 
seemed to have completely turned his young 
head from contentment and the love of ad- 
venture into discontent and a violent itching 
for riches. 

‘‘You’ll see both a-plenty before we’re 
through with it, take it from me.” 

“What’s all them pink spots on the map, 
islands?” inquired Bill scanning them closely. 

“Yes, and the blue part outside is the Pacific 
Ocean while that on the inside represents va- 
rious inlets, straits, sounds, canals, etc. So 
you see we take what is called the inside route 
and it will be as smooth sailing us if we were 
going to Albany on the day boat. ’ ’ 

“An’ what happens when we land at Skag- 
way?” 

‘ ‘ There we change to the railroad, which has 
been built in recent years over the White Pass 
across the Coast Range, and we are then in the 
Yukon Territory which, as I told you and your 
mother, is a part of Canada. The railroad ends 
at White Horse, a town about a hundred miles 
farther north. We’ll still have about seven 
hundred miles to travel before we get to Circle 


HO! FOR THE GOLD COUNTRY 29 

City, but we do this leg by a steamer on the 
Yukon River, and from there to the land of the 
Yeeha^s on the Big Black River we’ll have to 
cover with dog-sleds,” concluded Jack. 

Their journey across the continent was about 
as exciting as a trip from Manhattan Street to 
Bowling Green on the Subway. While the boys 
were very much awake when in their waking 
state, when it came to sleeping they could beat 
the seven sleepers by a stretch, and as 
for appetites — ^well, they just naturally had an 
exaggerated idea of what their stomachs were 
for — and ate like young pug-uglies. In truth 
they were on the job every time the dining car 
waiter announced the last call for breakfast and 
the first call for lunch and dinner. 

As they were nearing Savanna up in the 
northwest corner of Illinois, Jack told his pal 
that they would soon strike the Mississippi 
River and that from there on to St. Paul the 
railroad parallels the ‘father of waters.’ 

“The Mississippi is a thousand five hundred 
miles long, has its head waters at Lake Itaska 
in Northern Minnesota and empties into the 
Gulf of Mexico about a hundred miles south of 
New Orleans,” explained Jack. “You will see 


30 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


from this, Bill, that there are other rivers in 
our United States besides the noble Hudson/’ 

Presently the train ran right along side of 
the great river. Bill took one look at the in- 
stallment of scenery which lay spread out be- 
fore them as flat as a board and then he burst 
out into a long and loud cackle, making, accord- 
ing to Jack’s way of thinking, a holy show of 
them both. 

‘‘Why the big noise questioned Jack in a 
sour voice, for he was exasperated beyond all 
measure at this unseemly conduct of his pal. 

“It’s enough to make a bucking broncho 
laugh. The Mississippi eh? and you’d put it in 
the same class with the Hudson? Why it’s 
nothin’ but a stream o’ mud,” Bill made an- 
swer. 

“You must remember that we’re a thousand 
miles from its delta,” expostulated Jack. 

“That’s nothin’; the Hudson’s so wide at 
Noo York the politicians can’t get enough money 
together at one time to build a bridge acrost 
it, see Buddy?” 

And let it be said in Bill’s behalf that that 
part of the Mississippi which is visible to the 


HO! FOR THE GOLD COUNTRY 31 

eye where the Burlington railway parallels it 
does make a mighty poor showing. 

The boys were conspicuous for their silence 
all the rest of the way to St. Paul for Bill had 
made up his mind that he wouldn T let even his 
pal run down his Hudson River, and Jack had 
taken a mental vow that, pal or no pal, he would 
never again point out any wonder, ancient or 
modern, whether produced by nature or fash- 
ioned by the hand of man again to Bill, because 
the latter always pooh-poohed everything un- 
less it was in or intimately associated with the 
city of Bagdad-on-the-Hudson. 

As the train was nearing Livingstone, Mon- 
tana, late in the afternoon of the following day 
the boys had entirely forgotten that the Imuddy 
waters of the Mississippi had been the innocent 
cause of making them a little sore at each other 
and all was to the merry with them again. 

Livingstone is the junction where the change 
is made for Gardiner, the ‘‘gateway of the 
Yellowstone,’’ and everybody in the car was 
talking about the hot-springs, the geysers, the 
‘Devil’s Paint Pot,’ ‘Hell’s Half -Acre’ and 
other wonders to be seen there. Moreover 
quite a number of passengers were tourists who 


32 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

had made this long western trip for the express 
purpose of seeing the Park. 

‘‘We should by all means have seen the Park 
since we are so near it. It was a great mistake 
of mine to have bought our tickets through to 
Seattle without a stop-over here,’’ said Jack who 
was genuinely regretful that he had not thought 
of it at the time, but it wa’s too late now. 

“Never youse mind,” bolstered up Bill cheer- 
ily, “we’ll stop off when we comes back and 
we’ll have all the time we needs and plenty o’ 
coin to do it on.” 

“That listens all right too but I have observed 
it is very seldom indeed that a fellow ever 
returns over the same trail that he sets out on, 
and that the time to see a thing is when he 
passes by the first time. Well, we’ll get the 
gold we’re after and then I’m going to make a 
tour of the world strictly for pleasure.” 

“I’m with youse Jack,” responded Bill 
heartily. 

Jack made no reply for he could see himself 
carrying Bill along as a piece of excess baggage 
and having him size up everything they saw 
using his Noo York, as he calls it, as a yard- 
stick to measure it by. Bill was all right for a 


HO! FOR THE GOLD COUNTRY 33 

trip of any kind where a sure-shot and brute- 
force were needed but on a pleasure trip around 
the world — well he preferred to go it alone. 

Came the time when the shine porter indi- 
cated his desire to brush off the boys and they 
knew that they were getting close to the end of 
the first leg of their journey — Seattle. They 
were right glad to get off the train, though 
withal they had had a pleasant journey and had 
met a number of interesting people. Among 
them was a Mr. Rayleigh who was accompanied 
by his very charming daughter Miss Vivian. 

Jack had told the Rayleighs a little of his 
varied experiences in the World War, of his 
expedition to the Arctics, of his more recent 
journey to Mexico (giving Bill all the credit of 
their adventures there) and of their proposed 
trip to Alaska to find gold. The net result of 
it all was that the chance acquaintance ripened 
into a warm friendship before they left the train 
at Seattle and his new found friends gave Jack 
a very cordial invitation to visit them in Chi- 
cago when he returned from his quest in the 
Northland, but they left poor Bill out in the 
cold. 

Jack didn’t blame Mr. Rayleigh much for he 


34 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

didn’t know Bill’s heart and he judged him by 
exterior appearances only. Poor Bill ! the only 
way he could ever get a look-in anywhere was 
when some one saw him in action, and if Mr, 
Rayleigh could have seen him swatting German 
U-boats, or on the ’dobe in that fight with TjO- 
pez’s gang he would have welcomed him with 
open arms. 

As it was. Jack accepted the invitation so 
cordially given, with avidity, for he liked Miss 
Vivian — she was so different from those New 
York girls (but hush ! it would never do to voice 
tliis thought in Bill’s hearing or there would be 
a pitched battle on the spot) and she seemed 
to him more like a beautiful dream picture than 
a real being who lived in a world of three di- 
mensions. 

‘^Yes,” he said to himself, ‘T’ve simply got 
to get that gold now, there ’s no two ways about 
it.” 


Seattle, so named after old Chief Seattle, 
an Indian who was friendly to the whites, is built 
on a site where a handful of Indians once had 
their village, but it was an important place even 
then in virtue of its being a convenient point 


HO! FOR THE GOLD COUNTRY 35 

where every once in a while thousands of 
Indians would meet and hold their pow- 
wows. 

It was settled by the pale faces about seventy 
years ago and when the gold stampede for 
the Klondike was on, it was the great center 
for outfitting the prospectors. Later on Skag- 
way became the chief outfitting station but as 
the latter town is in Alaska a duty must also be 
paid by those who cross over the boundary line 
into the Yukon Territory since it is a part of 
Canada. To get around this the boys concluded 
that they would wait until they got to Circle 
City and outfit up there if this was possible. 

J ack was rather surprised to find that Seattle 
was a fine, up-to-date city in every sense of 
the word but of course Bill couldnT see it that 
way at all, so listen to him yawp: 

‘‘Youse could set tho whole blinkin’ town 
down on the East Side of Noo York and then 
where ’d it be? Youse couldn’t find it, see!” 

By the following Monday the boys had seen 
ever^dhing that Seattle and the surrounding 
country had to offer but the only things that 
interested Bill were the Siwash Indians and 
Mount Ranier. 


36 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

‘T suppose you 11 say that the New Yorkers 
are dirtier than these Siwashes and that Mount 
Ranier canl hold a candle to the Palisades,^’ 
Jack bantered him. 

‘^Somebody must have taken the wash out 
of them Siwashes from the way they smell, and 
as for Mount Ranier 111 say it^s a real moun- 
tain. Let^s climb it, what say, JackT’ 

‘‘After we get the gold,’^ was his paPs come- 
back. 

The five days that followed on the S. 8, Prin- 
cess Alice were long, bright, glorious, tiresome 
ones and the boys would have enjoyed every 
minute of the time if that disconcerting, mad- 
dening, magic word gold had not kept burning 
in their brains. They saw yellow and the 
nearer they came to that wonderful land in the 
far north, which the discoveries of gold had 
made as famous as diamonds have made the 
Kimberly mines or watered stock has made Wall 
Street, their very beings seemed to be trans- 
muted into the precious metal. 

Hence, neither the great Coast Range Moun- 
tains nor the wonderful glaciers appealed over- 
much to these youngsters who had set their 


HO! FOR THE GOLD COUNTRY 37 

hearts on getting gold out of the Yukon- Arctic 
district just as firmly as had ever the most sea- 
soned prospector. 

But Juneau did make an impression on Bill 
for he heard tales of gold up there the like of 
which he had never heard before. Only once 
did he think to belittle the town by making odi- 
ous comparisons of it with his ^‘Noo York’^ hut 
with Jack^s help he smothered the attempt for 
he was in the gold country now and was carried 
away by that malignant disease known as the 
gold fever. 


CHAPTEE III 


ON THE EDGE OF THINGS 

T he Princess Alice made a stop for a few 
hours at Juneau, a town standing on a 
promontory between Lynn Canal and the Taku 
Eiver, and the boys, with many other pas- 
sengers, disembarked to see what they could see. 
Here for the first time they felt they were get- 
ting pretty close to the field of their future ac- 
tivities for they were in Alaska, the land of the 
midnight sun and the aurora borealis, the 
moose ajid the caribou, the prehistoric glacier 
and — hidden gold. 

Across the water a great mill was in full blast 
and as they stood looking at it a big, grisly sort 
of a man, who appeared to be between fifty and 
sixty, and whose clothes showed that he was an 
old time prospector, moved over toward them. 
Evidently he had in mind the idea of holding 
some small conversation with them, for up on 
top of the world the inhabitants do not consider 
38 


ON THE EDGE OF THINGS 39 

formal introductions as being at all necessary 
when they feel like talking to any one.. 

‘‘Goin’ to buy it boysT’ he asked, grinning 
good-naturedly to show that his intentions were 
of the best. 

‘‘Afore we do, we^d kinda like to know what 
it is, for we’d hate to buy a pig-in-a-poke, ’ ^ re- 
phed Bill smiling just as cheerfully, only, as I 
have previously mentioned, whenever Bill 
smiled the scar across his cheek made him look 
as if he was getting ready to exterminate a 
greaser. 

‘ ‘ Oh, I see, you youngsters are new up here — 
tourists maybe,” came from the big throated 
man. 

“We’re new up here all right,” admitted 
Jack, “but we’re not up here to see the sights, 
or for our health either, but to do a bit of pros- 
pecting. ’ ’ 

“Shake pards,” and he held out a calloused 
hand, as big as a ham and as homy as a toad’s 
back, to each of them in turn. “I’m Hank 
Dease, but in these parts I’m known as Grizzly 
Hank. And who might you fellows be ! ” 

“I’m Jack Heaton of New Jersey, and this 
is my side-kick. Bill Adams of New York City, 


40 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

New York County and New York State, and 
there with the goods as needed,’’ 

‘ ‘ I blazes ! I ’m right glad to know yon boys, ’ ’ 
drawled Grizzly Hank, ^Hor you look to me as 
if you’re made o’ the right kind o’ timber. 
Since you’re strangers here I’ll tell you about 
Juneau, which I allow is the finest city in the 
world.” 

Now Juneau has a population of about two 
thousand people, so, naturally. Bill was going 
to jump right in and monopolize things by ask- 
ing Grizzly Hank if he’d ever been in Noo 
York, but Jack gave him the high-sign not to 
break in and so for once his pal held his peace. 

‘H’ll tell you about the wonderful things we 
have here first and then if there’s any little 
thing you want to know about prospectin’ up 
here or in the Yukon Territory I’ll tell you as 
good as I know. I’ve been in this country for 
nigh onto thirty years and you see how well I ’ve 
panned out, but you fellows may do better — a 
few do, but, I blazes, most of ’em don’t.” 

Grizzly Hank had found a couple of good lis- 
teners and as he liked to talk he was making the 
most of them while they lasted. 


ON THE EDGE OF THINGS 41 

‘^That’s the Treadwell mill you are lookin’ at 
over yonder on Douglas Island. It has an out- 
put of gold that runs upwards of eighty 
thousand dollars a month. The first gold ever 
found in Alaska was down at Sitka in 1873, but 
it was old Joe Juneau, a French-Canadian 
prospector, who showed that gold could be 
mined here in payin’ quantities. 

that time another prospector named 
Treadwell who was in this district had loaned 
a little money on some claims over there and 
finally had to take them for the debt. Later on 
he bought French Pete ’s claim which lay next to 
it for the magnificent sum of five hundred dol- 
lars; and these claims which he bought for a- 
mere song are the great Treadwell mines of 
to-day. I blazes ! There are some other mines 
in this district and since Treadwell took over the 
original claims the output of gold has been to 
the tune of a hundred million dollars and the 
end is nowhere yet in sight. I blazes ! ’ ’ 

‘‘Do you mean to say. Mister Dease, that 
gold is mined over there like coal?” asked 
Bill, thereby exposing his ignorance. 


42 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

The grisly prospector looked amused but he 
recalled the time when his own ideas of mining 
gold had been just about as vague. 

‘‘You see, boys, gold is found in several ways 
up here. Sometimes it is ’bedded in quartz 
when the ore, as it is called, has to be mined and 
then crushed in a stamp mill to get the gold out ; 
more often it is found as free gold, dust and 
grains and bits of pure gold mixed with the 
dirt when it must be panned, that is, put in a 
pan and the dirt washed away and then the 
gold, which is the heaviest, falls to the bottom 
of the pan, and again,” he lowered his voice to 
make what he was about to tell them more im- 
pressive, “nuggets of gold are picked up from 
bits the size of a pea to chunks as large as my 
fist ! I blazes ! It all depends on the locality. 

“These diggings here are quartz mines and 
the ore is of mighty low grade — only a couple 
of dollars in gold to the ton of quartz. To get 
this gold out the quartz, or ore, is crushed in a 
mill called a stamp, and the Treadwell has the 
largest number of stamps of any mill in the 
world — ^upwards of two thousand, I blazes!” 


ON THE EDGE OF THINGS 43 

Grizzly Hank paused for a moment to get 
a fresh start. 

‘‘Go on Mister Hank, we^re listenin’ with 
both ears,” urged Bill. 

“As you were saying — ” Jack paced him. 

“As I was about to say,” continued the 
prospector, who was every whit as appreciat- 
ive of his audience as it was of him, “when 
Treadwell began to take out gold, old timers 
all along the coast clear down as far as ’Frisco 
heard of it, came up and pushed further north 
believing that they would find other lodes of 
gold bearing ore and they believed right, I 
blazes ! 

“That other mine over there on Douglas 
Island that you see to the right is the Mexican 
Mine but it’s small fry as against the Tread- 
well for it only has a hundred and twenty 
stamps working.” 

“We’re not pertiklarly keen on Mexican 
mines, oil wells or anything else that goes by 
the name of Mex — ^we had all the Mexican stuff 
we wanted when we was down there six months 
ago,” broke in Bill to whom the word brought 
no very pleasant recollections. 

“To this side of the Mexican mine,” went 


44 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

on tlie prospector, is the Ready Bullion mine 
and it has a two hundred stamp mill. ’ ’ 

Ready Bidlion listens good to me,^’ ad- 
mitted Jack, once more breaking into his dis- 
course. 

‘‘Shortly after the Treadwell mine began to 
show itself a bonanza, a story went the rounds 
that it was an accidental lode, or a blowout as 
we call it ; that is, it was a lode of gold depos- 
ited there by some gigantic upheaval of the 
earth when Alaska was in the makin’ and that 
it was the only place north of fifty-six where 
gold could be mined at a profit. 

“I always believed that yarn was set agoin’ 
to keep other prospectors out of the country; 
but when it kept on producin’, men with picks 
and shovels came here just the same, and what 
happened was that other deposits were found 
and these are the mines that are bein ^ worked 
now in southern Alaska. 

“Still other prospectors pushed on further 
north with their packs on their backs, on sleds 
which they pulled themselves or which were 
hauled by dog teams, on horses and mules, and 
they toiled up the Trail of Heartache^ as the 
nearly straight-up White Pass trail was called 


ON THE EDGE OF THINGS 45 

in those days. I blazes, and, I was one of ’em. 

^‘Once on the other side of yonder range we 
prospected for gold bearin’ quartz, and panned 
the river beds until we reached the Klondike 
Eiver. There is where Carmack, with two 
Indian pards, Skookum Jim and Tagish 
Charlie, had already stalled rich claims. One 
day Carmack went down to the stream to wash 
a piece of moose he had killed and it was then 
that he saw gold in the water and when he 
panned it he got more nuggets than his eyes 
could believe. News of gold travels faster 
than greased lightnin’ and it was not long be- 
fore the biggest gold stampede was on that 
ever took place in the golden history of gold! 
I blazes! 

“Over night the Klondike became famous 
and wherever human bein’s lived that spoke 
a language it was a word that they knew and 
it meant but one thing to them — and that was 
gold. And, I blazes, the world knew that gold 
was bein’ panned out in the Klondike by hun- 
dreds and thousands and hundreds of thou- 
sands of dollars and the world went crazy over 
it. 

“When I got there one mornin’ I was dead- 


46 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

broke but by night I was a rich man. It was 
nothin’ to wash a hundred, five hundred, I 
blazes, a thousand dollars from a few pans of 
gravel. And still further north, somewhere 
along the Porcupine River, Thornton and a 
couple of his pards discovered a blow-out 
where nuggets of gold were so thick they could 
pick ’em up like stones; they packed them in 
moosehide sacks and corded them up like 
stovewood until they had all the gold they 
thought they could carry out of the country.” 

Grizzly Hank had the boys going for fair. 
They stood as though they were magnetized to 
the spot. Both were itching for more detailed 
information but neither spoke his mind for 
they had agreed before they left New York 
that while they would have to admit they were 
prospectors bent on finding gold, like countless 
thousands before them, they would give no 
hint, under any circumstance, of their real 
mission to any one. 

‘^Go on — ” said Bill impatiently. 

‘‘Yes, pards,” he went on, his sharp, deep- 
set eyes brightening which showed that how- 
ever it was he had failed to keep the elusive 
metal he had found, his long quest left no cause 


ON THE EDGE OF THINGS 47 

for regret; ‘^yes pards, the gold belt runs from 
the Gulf of Alaska to the Arctic Ocean, and the 
further north you go the more gold youdl find 
and — the harder it will be to get it down under ^ 
I’m goin’ to the Porcupine Eiver district as 
soon as I can get some one to grub-stake 


A mighty bellowing blast came from the 
triple throated whistle of the steamer at the 
dock and drowned out the alluring voice of the 
prospector pioneer. Then the warning sound 
subsided for a moment. 

‘^There’s your boat a-whistlin’ an’ if you’re 
goin’ on her you’d better scoot. I blazes! 
Good-by and good luck.” 

They started for the boat on the run but 
their minds were in a semi-torpid condition, 
for the old miner had surely enough set 
them by the ears. When they were again on 
the deck of the Princess Alice and had some- 
what recovered from the magic of his words 
they fell to discussing gold. Grizzly Hank and 
a few other consequential things. 

‘‘Moosehide sacks of gold corded up like 

Un Alaska and the far north the United States is called 
down under. 


48 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

stovewood!” repeated Bill blinking his blue 
eyes. 

‘^The farther north you go the more gold 
you ^11 find!’’ reiterated Jack, for the words 
sounded like ready money to him. 

‘'Shake, old pard, we’re on the right trail,” 
and the boys struck hands with a vengeance. 
“I was thinkin’ as how we orter have taken 
Grizzly Hank along with us,” commented 
Bill; “he knows all the ropes and he’d a-come 
in mighty handy. ’ ’ 

“I thought of that too when he was talking 
to us but then we’d have to split up our win- 
nings into thirds which would mean that we’d 
simply short-change ourselves out of a couple 
of million dollars or so. Then again his ideas 
and ours would probably be entirely different 
for he’s a prospector of the old school while we 
are discoverers of the new school. Finally, 
‘two’s company and three’s none’ is just as 
true, I imagine of the trail as it is of a parlor 
date.” 

“Agreed to on all points,” said Bill, “but 
when we comes back let’s grub-stake him to the 
limit so that he can eke out a million or so on 
his own account afore he kicks-in.” 


ON THE EDGE OF THINGS 


49 


Skagway was the jumping off place as far as 
the Princess Alice was concerned and the boys 
were right glad of it for they were anxious 
more than ever to get into the heart of things. 
The town is on the Chilkat Inlet at the head of 
Lynn Canal and, like many others along the 
coast, it has a mountain for a background. 

They stopped over night at Mrs. Pullen’s ho- 
tel, which is also a wonderful Alaskan muse- 
um, and as they were looking about they came 
across a rack of the inevitable picture post 
cards. Bill said he was of a Imind to send one 
down under to a certain little telephone 
countess, (whom he could see in his mind’s eye 
masticating the indestructible listerated nug- 
gets and hear her say in the deep recesses of 
his auditory organ ‘‘who do you want to talk 
to?” with the “smile that wins.”) 

On one of the post cards was a picture of a 
very pleasant, mild mannered looking gentle- 
man whose kindly eyes and benevolent mouth 
bore out Jack’s statement that all men north of 
fifty-six are white at heart. Under the pic- 
ture on the card of the somewhat incongruous 
caption of Soapy Smith, 

“I suppose he’s the Sunday School Su- 


50 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

perintendent, owner of the First National 
Bank and mayor of this burg,^^ Bill remarked 
to his partner. 

A prosperous looking individual standing 
near-by overheard BilPs facetious comment, 
smiled sadly and said : 

take it you boys haven’t heard the story 
of Soapy Smith and so I’ll enlighten you as to 
the manner of man he was. Soapy came by 
his saponified cognomen honestly for he began 
his career as a full member of the fraternity 
of gentle grafters. Soapy’s line was to wrap 
up a ten dollar bill with a small bar of soap and 
sell it from the tail end of a wagon for the 
small sum of one dollar. 

‘^Then the lamb would take his purchase 
around in the back alley where no one could see 
him, and open it up and then he would find that 
he was out just ninety-nine cents, for while he 
had the soap the slippery ten-spot still re- 
mained as a part of Soapy’s financial reserve 
fund. 

‘‘But this graft was too legitimate for Soapy 
for he had to give a bar of soap worth at least 
a cent to each and every purchaser. Hav- 
ing accumulated a little coin he drifted in here 


ON THE EDGE OF THINGS 51 

with the stampeders in ’98 and opened up a 
saloon, dance-hall and gambling house. As if 
this game was too honest he organized a gang 
of outlaws and they robbed men and killed 
them too, right and left. 

‘‘Law abiding citizens got tired of these 
hold-ups, for the prospectors and miners be- 
gan to go through Dyea and use the Chilcoot 
Pass rather than take a chance of meeting 
Soapy and his gang in Skagway or on the 
White Pass trail. So a Vigilance Committee 
was organized and at one of their meetings one 
night they put Frank Eeed at the gate to keep 
Soapy and the members of his gang out. 

“As soon as Soapy heard of the meeting he 
took his shootin’ irons and went over to it 
where Eeed promptly refused to admit him. 
Came two simultaneous pistol shots; Soapy 
fell dead and Eeed lived for a couple of weeks 
and then he cashed in. If you go up to the 
canyon you’ll see the graves of both these men 
in the cemetery there. So you see you can’t 
most always tell by lookin’ at a man what is 
under his vest.” 

The next morning the boys took the train 
for White Horse, about a hundred and ten miles 


52 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

due north at which point they would make 
connections with a boat on the Yukon River. 
While the stampeders had toiled up the icy 
trail of White Pass, their backs breaking 
under their packs and their hearts breaking 
under the torture of it all, the boys were 
now making the trip in a comfortable train of 
the White Pass and Yukon Railway, the first 
in Alaska and the Yukon Territory. 

‘TsnT just exactly like ridin’ on the Twenti- 
eth Century, is it JackV^ observed Bill as the 
train crept at a snaiPs pace up to the summit. 

Just then the train rounded a curve blasted 
out of solid rock and they looked straight down 
a thousand feet into a canyon. 

^‘More like a trip on the Elevated,^ ^ sug- 
gested Jack. 

Once over the Pass the engineer opened the 
throttle a littlh and the train picked up in 
speed. Then by way of varying the kaleido- 
scopic changes of scenery the train shot into 
a tunnel and out of it onto a tremendously high 
bridge that spans the Skagway River which 
flows tumultuously over the rocky bottom on 
its way to the gulf. 

A few miles beyond they crossed an old wag- 


ON THE EDGE OF THINGS 53 

on road which was being built to connect 
White Horse with White Pass but the railroad 
was completed first and took its place. A 
dozen miles or so farther on they saw some log 
cabins which the conductor of the train pointed 
out as having been the center of White Pass 
City, one of the tented towns that had sprung 
up during the mad rush to the Klondike, and 
when it subsided the town vanished. 

Then came into view Glacier Gorge and high 
above it the train sped along its very edge, 
then wound up a long grade, when spread be- 
fore them were the Sawtooth Mountains and 
Dead Horse Gulch. 

Sounds like the name of a dime novel I 
onct read,’’ reflected Bill. 

‘‘Why Dead Horse Gulch P’ Jack asked the 
conductor. 

“Because when the rush was on in ’98 thou- 
sands of the pioneers brought their horses 
with them and so many of them died down 
there from starvation and overwork that their 
bodies choked up the gulch. 

“See that sheet of water yonder!” he con- 
tinued, “that’s the beginning of Lake Bennet 
and there the hustling, bustling, town of Bennet 


54 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


once was. As soon as the gold crowd from 
Skagway reached this lake they gave up the 
trail and threw together rafts and craft of 
every description. They piled their outfits on 
or in them and then floated down the Yukon 
River to the Klondike, unless they were 
drowned first, as many were. You’ll be glad 
to know, boys, the train hesitates twenty 
minutes at Rennet for victuals,” and the boys 
thought it was high time that it did so. 

When this important function was over and 
they were again on the train it ran along the 
edge of the lake until the lower end of it was 
reached where the friendly con called ‘^Car- 
cross! Carcross!” 

“This town,” he told them, “is built on a 
place where the Indians used to watch for the 
caribou to cross and this is the cause why of 
its name.” 

After a short ride their rail trip — the last 
they would have for many, many moons — came 
to an end at White Horse, on the Thirty Mile 
River. They considered they were playing in 
great good luck, for the steamboats leave only 
twice a week for Dawson and one was sched- 
uled to sail that night. 


ON THE EDGE OF THINGS 55 

Tliis gave the boys plenty of time to look 
around White Horse but they saw with eyes 
dimly for their vision was as blurred by their 
quest for gold as ever were those who had 
rushed madly through there in the days of ’98. 

Bill opined that he ‘Tiked White Horse fine 
as it has two boats a week we can get away on. ’ ’ 
As a matter of fact it is a lively town for the 
steamboats take on their supplies here for 
their down river trips. 

The boys walked over to the White Horse 
Eapids, as the Indians called it after a Finn- 
lander because of his light hair and whom they 
thought was as strong as a horse, after he had 
lost his life in its swirling waters. And hun- 
dreds of other lives and dozens of outfits were 
lost in the wild scramble of the early pros- 
pectors to get to the gold fields. 

But neither Jack nor Bill gave more than a 
passing thought to these foolhardy and adven- 
turous souls who had risked and lost all in 
their futile attempts to get to the Klondike; 
much less did they think of those who had made 
the golden goal and won out in the finality of 
their efforts, for the boys’ own scheme con- 
sumed every moment of their time, and all of 


56 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

their energies were directed upon the consum- 
mation of it since they were gold seekers just as 
truly as were any of those who had gone be- 
fore. 

The steamboat Selkirk, which was to carry 
the boys from White Horse to Circle City, was 
of the old time kind that was used on the 
Mississippi and other rivers half a century 
ago ; that is, it was of the wood-burning, stern 
paddle-wheel type. 

As they stood out on deck the next morning 
Jack tried to lose sight of the big issue for the 
moment and he imagined himself to be the 
first explorer who had traced the Yukon River 
in this region. If he had not had gold on the 
brain it would have been an easy thing to do 
for here were the same virgin meadows, prim- 
eval forests and silent fastnesses just as they 
were when the Russians laid claim to Alaska. 
And the gold, he reasoned, that was here then 
is, for the greater part, here now. 

Not once since they had left Seattle had Bill 
compared anything with his Noo York, at 
least not out loud, but when they were passing 
through the headwaters of the Yukon he said 
as though he was talking to himself, ‘Tt hasn’t 


ON THE EDGE OF THINGS 57 

got anything on the Spuyten Duyvil/' which, 
let me elucidate, is a tidal channel that con- 
nects the Harlem Eiver with the Hudson Eiver 
and so forms the northern boundary of Man- 
hattan Island on which New York City proper 
is built. But in the eight hundred and sixty 
odd mile trip down the Yukon to Circle City 
Bill had ample opportunity to amend his snap 
comparison and even then he was fifteen hun- 
dred miles from its many channeled delta 
where it flows into the Bering Sea. 

‘‘Doesn’t look much like the naked north or 
frozen regions that the folks back home think 
it is,” remarked Bill, as they passed a tundra 
(pronounced toon'-dra) which was thick with 
grass and shrubs and sprinkled with various 
plants in flower. 

‘■‘I’ll say it doesn’t,” replied Jack, “but 
wait, we haven’t run into winter weather yet.” 

As the boat plied its way softly and swiftly 
down the Yukon they ^aw occasional Indian 
villages, the men taking life easy, the children 
playing and the squaws busy drying the golden 
salmon on poles set in the sun. Then to the 
great delight of both boys they saw a caribou 
swim out from the shore intending, probably. 


58 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

to cross to the other side, but frightened hy 
the modernity of the throbbing, smoking mon- 
ster he swam back faster than he came, and on 
gaining the shore he disappeared from view. 

Another time Bill went over to Jack, who was 
talking with some passengers, and saluting as 
to an officer he said, ‘T have to report, sir, a 
bear on the starboard bow. ’ ^ And sure enough 
there stood a huge bear high on the ledge of a 
rock and so motionless was he that he seemed 
carved out of the rock itself ; but in- 
wardly he was fully alive to this mechanical 
invasion of his eminent domain. 

Never was a river trip of such wild beauty, 
so full of interest and yet such soothing quiet 
as this one the boys were now making and it 
would have proved doubly delightful if they 
had been pleasure seekers instead of gold seek- 
ers. The only breaks in the continuity of the 
run were made when the boat nosed its way 
along a bank and, finding an anchorage, she 
wooded up, that is she took on wood to be 
burned under her boilers. 

Now the river widened and the boat ran into 
the more placid waters of Lake LeBarge which 
Jack pointed out to Bill as having been the 


ON THE EDGE OF THINGS 


59 


scene of action in The Cremation of Sam 
McGee, a poem by Robert Service. On reach- 
ing the lower end of the lake the boat shot down 
the Thirty Mile River where the swift current 
winds forth and back like a tangled rope and 
it takes a pilot who knows his trade to hold her 
to the channel. 

But the most exciting piece of navigation is 
at Five Finger Rapids, for here the river nar- 
rows down into a neck and almost closing the 
latter are five ugly finger-like rocks projecting 
above the surface with the water swirling 
swiftly round them in mighty eddies. It looked 
to Jack and Bill as if there was not enough room 
for the boat to pass between any two of them 
but this didn T seem to worry the pilot any who 
held her nose hard toward the middle finger. 

The boys thought that he must be tired of 
life. But hold there matey, just as they had 
timed her to strike the rock he bore down hard 
on his wheel to port and the boat missed the 
rock by the skin of its teeth. Their hearts 
dropped back from their throats to their tho- 
raxes again and they believed they still stood 
a fair chance of finding the gold they were after. 

And now xjomes Dawson into view — Dawson 


6o JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


in the heart of the Klondike — the Dawson of 
.tradition, adventure, romance and — of gold! 
This is the identical town where that great army 
of pioneer gold seekers, who braved the rigors 
of the winters, the dangers of the rapids, the 
stresses of starvation and the robbers of Soapy 
Smith’s gang, found themselves if they were 
unfortunate enough to be so fortunate. 

As the steamboat ties up here for half a day 
to load and unload its cargo the boys went on 
a hike over to an Indian village called Moose- 
hide, a little way down the trail from Dawson. 
On returning to town they got the borry, as Bill 
called it, of a couple of horses and rode out 
eight or ten miles where some great dredges 
were at work bringing up the sand and gravel 
from the streams and hydraulicking equipments 
were washing the gold out of it. 

^‘This kind of mining,” Jack said to his part- 
ner, ^4s simply panning out gold on a big scale 
by machinery, and gold fields that are not rich 
enough to be worked profitably by a prospector 
will yield gold on a paying basis where hydrau- 
licking can be taken advantage of. ’ ’ 

^Tt’s too slow a game for me,” was Bill’s 


ON THE EDGE OF THINGS 6i 


idea of the scheme, “I wants to pick it up in 
chunks.” 

“That’s what we’re here for,” Jack made 
answer. 

They left Dawson that evening and the next 
morning still found them in the Yukon Terri- 
tory, but shortly after breakfast the boat 
crossed the International boundary line and 
they were on good old U. S. soil again. The 
boat soon made a landing at Eagle City where 
Fort Egbert is located and the first thing Jack 
spied was a big wireless station which he knew 
belonged to the U. S. Army. 

From Eagle to Circle City, or just Circle as it 
is called for short, is a sail of a hundred and 
ninety miles. Both Jack and Bill were dead 
tired of traveling and they hailed Circle as 
heartily as they would have hailed their own 
home town. But they didn’t know what they 
were hailing. The only outstanding fact with 
them was that they had arrived, or at any rate 
they had gone as far as trains and boats could 
carry them toward the goal of their desires. 
The bridge was swung ashore and they got off 
without delay. The whistle blew a couple of 


62 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


sonorous blasts, and the boat backed off and 
went on her way down stream. 

In the days of the gold rush Circle had been 
the great outfitting town in these parts. It was 
built up entirely of log cabins and it had more 
log cabins than any town had ever gathered 
together before or since. Why Circle City? 
Whence the name? Because when the town 
was started it was believed to be located right 
on the Arctic Circle but later it was learned that 
it was a good eighty miles below the Circle. 

As the boys stepped ashore they were greeted 
by a few white men, some Indians and the ear- 
splitting howls of the huskies. 

‘T tell you Bill, we’re on the very edge of 
things.” 

^‘You said a mouthful, pard,” was that 
worthy’s sober reply. 


CHAPTEE IV 


WHEN BILL AND BLACK PETE MET 

T he boys were sorely disappointed in Circle 
for while it had been, as they had heard, 
‘ ‘ the largest log house town in the world, ’ ^ and 
as far as log houses go it was yet, for that 
matter, still that essential moving principle that 
makes up a town, namely the inhabitants, was 
lacking. 

But times have changed since the early ’90 ^s 
and now all that remain of its population are 
a few men who look after the stores and a hand- 
ful of prospectors, miners, hunters and trappers 
who come into town to buy their supplies, and 
these hearten it up a bit. As for the empty log 
houses they serve only as so many monuments 
to commemorate the time when the town was 
alive and full of action. 

You ask why the town died oufF I’ll tell 
you. Gold was discovered there in 1894 and 
for the next four years its growth was phenom- 
63 


64 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


enal — the wonder of all Alaska; but when the 
Klondike was opened up the inhabitants left 
everything behind them and made a mad rush 
for the new gold fields, and so at the present 
time there is little left to tell of the glory that 
was Circle’s. 

The way Jack had figured it out coming up 
on the boat was that they would get their 
clothes, grub, sleds and dogs at Circle, which 
prospectors and others he had talked with said 
they could do, and then when they were all fixed 
and winter had set in they would push on over 
to the land of the Yeehats and there establish a 
base from which they could work. 

This base of supplies was to be like the hub 
of a great wheel the circumference of which 
would include all of the territory to be pros- 
pected and their local expeditions would be 
like the spokes, that is they would strike out 
with their dog teams, traveling light, taking a 
new line of direction each trip they made. In 
this way they could, he said, make a thorough 
search for the hidden gold that those before 
them, had struck so rich but which for divers 
reasons best known to those who had sought it 
had never been gotten out of the country. 


BILL AND BLACK PETE MET 65 

His best thought, as he had previously ex- 
plained in answer to an objection of BilPs, was 
to make this search during the winter months 
instead of doing it in summer-time in virtue 
of the fact that they could then use dog sleds 
and this would enable them to cover the ground 
without working themselves to death and do it 
at a goodly clip besides. 

Now, when Bill had set his eyes on the de- 
serted City of Circle he instantly took a violent 
dislike to it. Having become fairly well posted 
on the geography of Ilasker, as he still persisted 
in calling it, he concocted the notion that what 
they should have done was to come up in the 
early spring and go on by boat to Port Yukon, 
which is about eighty-five miles farther on down 
the river. 

From there, he contended, they could have 
gotten a couple of canoes and paddled up the 
Porcupine and Big Black Eivers until they were 
close to where the International boundary line 
crosses the Arctic Circle. This done, (according 
to Jack’s own reasoning he said), they would 
be about as near the place where they wanted 
to make their winter quarters as they could get. 
But there was no getting away from it, they 


66 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


were now in Circle with winter fast coming on 
and it was too late to change the work sheet as 
previously laid out. 

By the time this argument was over, the boys 
had reached the Grand Palace Hotel, an enor- 
mous log building of two stories of the reg- 
ulation kind to be found in all frontier and 
mining towns. 

Running nearly the length of one side of 
the hall as they entered it, was a bar with a 
hotel register on the end nearest the door. At 
the extreme farther end of the hall a platform 
had been built up about as high as a man^s 
head, while any number of small round tables 
covered mth worn-out and faded green cloth 
were strewn about the room. 

The owner of the Grand Palace in the days 
antedating the Klondike rush was Sam Has- 
tings, or Silent Sam as he was called, because 
he never spoke unless he was spoken to and his 
replies were always pithy and to the point. His 
face was smooth shaven ; he wore a low crowned, 
narrow brimmed Stetson hat, a rolling collar 
with a flowing tie, silk shirt with diamond set 
gold buttons in the cuffs, a Prince Albert coat 
with a six gun conveniently within reach under 


BILL AND BLACK PETE MET 67 

it, doeskin^ breeches and kid button shoes. Un- 
like Soapy Smith he was honest, as men of his 
tj^e went in those days, but like Soapy he died 
with his button shoes on. 

Now let this close-up of Silent Sam fade away 
and take a look at a snap-shot of Doc Marling, 
the present owner of the Grand Palace and you 
will observe a further change that time and 
circumstances have wrought in Circle. 

Doc is a big-headed man and bearded like a 
couple of pards. He wears a woolen shirt, 
under which beats a fair to middling heart; 
his breeches are also woolen tied around his 
ankles and he has on a pair of deerskin 
moccasins. 

He is no shooter — you could see that the 
moment you look at him — but it is history up 
yonder that he once choked a bear to death with 
his hands alone. 

He was the only animated object in the great 
bare room when the boys walked in and they 
felt like a couple of mavericks that had been cut 
out from the herd. No more lonesome place 

1 Doeskin is a kind of fine twilled cloth much used in those 
days for making breeches. 


68 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


had either of them ever been in this side of 
Nyack-on-the-Hudson. 

Bnt Doc Marling didn’t seem to feel that way, 
since after being there for twenty odd years 
perhaps he’d gotten used to it. He invited 
them to inscribe their names on the hotel reg- 
ister, after which he led the march down the 
hall — ^it seemed to the boys as if it was a block 
long — ^thence up the stair-way whose well-worn 
steps showed clearly that Circle had been very 
much alive in the days of her youth, and then to 
their room which was altogether too big. 

‘‘One thing sure, we’ll get in practice here for 
the long winter that is ahead of us,” reflected 
J ack philosophically. 

“It wouldn’t be half -bad if we had a ’phone 
connection with the American Consolidated Oil 
Company back in Noo York, but where are we? 
Five thousand miles away and not even a wire- 
less station nearer than Eagle. ‘I blazes!’ as 
Grizzly Hank down at Juneau says,” groused 
Bill. His indisposition was curious in that no 
matter how strenuous the tide of battle might 
be he had never a word to say, but inaction al- 
ways behaved as an irritant to his nervous sys- 
tem. 


BILL AND BLACK PETE MET 69 

Came soon the loud jangling of a bell and they 
knew it for a call to supper. They followed 
where it led and sat down to their first meal in 
Circle, and it was good. There were ten or a 
dozen men at the table with them and up here at 
the very outpost of civilization, where men are 
what they are, they all fell into loud and easy 
conversation. 

‘‘We^re in the hands of white men, as I said 
we’d be, back there in New York,” Jack told his 
partner when they were again in their room. 

Just as they were about to turn in they 
thought they heard a phonograph going, and as 
‘‘music hath charms to sooth the savage 
breast ’ ’ they went down into the big hall to be 
soothed. 

While in pre-Klondike days it was of nightly 
occurrence to find four or five hundred people 
gathered in the hall, there were now congre- 
gated perhaps some twenty-five or thirty men, 
and these were made up of Americans, French- 
Canadians, Indians, half-breeds, and a China- 
man or two, to say nothing of the bear. 

A few of those who composed this agglomer- 
ation of humanity, were the scum of the earth 
but most of them were men of strong character 


70 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

and sterling worth. Considering that they 
were on the very edge of things they were 
bound to be a rough and ready lot but taken all 
in all they were well behaved and peaceably in- 
clined — all except one and he was Black Pete. 

While the crowd by no means filled the void 
of the big hall, still it breathed enough of life in- 
to the stagnated atmosphere to take off the 
sharp edges of their lonesomeness. 

Now instead of a phonograph they discovered 
that the source of the music originated in a tall, 
rangy miner with a big bushy mustache, who 
was sitting on the platform and sawing away 
on a fiddle as if his whole soul was in it. Near 
the platform some kind of a disturbance was go- 
ing on around which the onlookers had formed 
themselves into a ring. Whatever it was they 
were greatly interested and from the roars of 
laughter they were evidently enjoying it hugely. 

Jack and Bill elbowed their way deep enough 
into the ring to see what the frolic was and what 
they saw they concluded wa's about as good as 
an act in a side-show. In a word it was a team 
of dancers executing with great precision and 
solemnity the ‘^bear-troC^ or bear-hug’^, or 
‘ bear-some thing-or-other’*, for a young French- 



‘IT WAS A TEAM OF DANCERS.’ 


— Page 70 





BILL AND BLACK PETE MET 71 

Canadian and a big brown bear, wbo stood erect 
on bis bind legs, when be was as tall as bis 
keeper, were executing a most ludicrous, albeit, 
a lumbering sort of dance. 

After a spell Eip Stoneback, the fiddler, 
ceased scraping the catgut strings with bis 
borse-bair bow and the trainer and his bear 
wound up their exhibition with a wrestling bout 
that tickled the everlasting daylights out of 
these simple northmen, from which it could be 
fairly deduced that, after all, they were really 
only boys ‘‘growed’^ up. 

The boys mingled freely with the knots of 
men taking in what they had to say about every- 
thing in general and little things in particular, 
for it was all brand-new and novel to them. 
Jack struck up a conversation with a young 
fellow named Jim Wendle from ^Frisco who 
had staked a claim over on Preacher Creek. 

‘‘The boys here are all right, he was saying 
to Jack, “there’s only one fellow who is really 
hard boiled and that’s Black Pete over there. 
He ’s laid out every man he ’s ever tackled, either 
with his fists, or his knife and I’ve heard that 
he shot a man once. He’s meaner than all get 
out when he’s had a few drinks so don’t get into 


72 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


any argument with him. Agree to anything he 
says if he talks to you.’^ 

Black Pete did not look the part of a ‘^bad 
man^’ though his face was hard and his com- 
plexion was swarthy. He was not very tall, 
had tremendous shoulders and having lived in 
thQ open Northland all his life he knew the run 
of men who gathered here. He was thoroughly 
disliked in Circle because of this disposition on 
his part to always want to pick a fight and 
there were men thereabouts who were actually 
afraid of him. 

At about the same time that Jack was getting 
his information concerning Black Pete another 
prospector was tipping off his history to Bill 
and it was lucky for both of the boys that they 
were “let in’^ on his past performances when 
they were. 

Black Pete and a boon companion were lean- 
ing against the bar when the latter made some 
passing remark about that young stripling and 
his p.artner who had just landed in Circle. 

^ ^ Sleem keed heem all right, ’ ’ returned Pete, 
“but I no got use for heem pardner — zat fellow 
weez da cut cross hees cheek. I give heem beeg 
leeking sometime. Maybe theese night. Watch 


BILL AND BLACK PETE MET 73 

a meenute. I have som’ fun with sleem keed.’^ 
Black Pete called to Jack and motioned him to 
come over, but as the latter had not been intro- 
duced he paid no attention and this aroused 
Black Peters ire. Then he and his companion 
started over toward Jack and Jim Wendle. 

^‘Be careful now,’’ his friend cautioned him. 

Black Pete laid his hand on Jack’s shoulder in 
a perfectly friendly like manner and said : 

‘^You and Jeena com’ heeva dreenk weeth 
me.” 

At that Jack got up from the table and looked 
Black Pete square in the eye. 

don’t drink,” he said shortly. 

Black Pete was mad clear through, that much 
was plain. 

Bill who had been taking a hand in a world- 
old game called poher, happened to see Jack and 
Black Pete facing each other and he divined 
trouble. He laid down liis cards and went over 
where his pardner and the bad un were, to listen 
in on the conversation. 

‘‘Heeve a seegar, then,” the Canuk insisted 
catching hold of Jack’s arm and pulling him to- 
ward the bar. 

Taking a firm hold on Black Pete’s wrist 


74 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

eJack removed his hand from his arm and said, 
without the slightest inflexion in his voice, 
don^t smoke.’’ 

Then the unexpected happened — that which 
had not happened in Circle in perhaps a dozen 
or twenty years before. 

^^You don’t eh?” growled Black Pete, infuri- 
ated at Jack’s cold refusal to join him in either 
one or the other, ‘‘then deem you, heeve a bul- 
let!” 

At the same time he whipped out his six- 
shooter and pulled the trigger, but his marks- 
manship was bad, for Bill had caught him by 
throat from the side and pulled his body over 
so that the bullet crashed through the roof, in- 
stead of boring a hole through Jack’s body. 

Expecting that the remaining chambers 
would be emptied in the struggle which took 
place between Bill and Black Pete the crowd 
dropped to the floor, jumped behind the bar, 
crawled under tables — all except Rene and he 
kept his trained bear between himself and the 
business end of the gun the bad man of Circle 
and the Harlem boy were struggling for. 

These latter two were well matched though 
there was no doubt but that Black Pete who was 


BILL AND BLACK PETE MET 75 

the larger was also the stronger, but sheer brute 
strength could not gain the mastery where the 
tricks of the wrestler’s art are brought to bear 
and Bill had a little the best of it. 

As the crowd rightly guessed when the first 
shot was fired, Black Pete did pull -the trigger 
every chance he got until all of his cartridges 
were shot otf but each time the bullet that was 
intended for Bill went wild and neither he nor 
the others were scratched. One bullet, though, 
shivered the big plate glass mirror over the bar 
into a thousand pieces and Doc Marling, the 
proprietor knew that he was having bad luck 
just then to the jig-time of three hundred dol- 
lars, even if it didn’t keep on for the next seven 
years. 

All the time the struggle was under way Jack 
stood by as though he was watching a friendly 
bout in Prof. William Adam’s Academy on 
Manhattan Street in the good old days. More 
than one of the onlookers wondered why he 
didn’t crack a bottle on Black Pete’s head and 
so help out his partner, but this was not the way 
the boys did team work. In a set-to of any kind 
whether it was with bare knuckles, with knives 
or with pistols neither one would take a hand in 


76 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


the affair the other was engaged in unless, as 
Jack had once explained to me, it was ‘^abso- 
lutely imperative.” 

And this status of the fray was far from hav- 
ing come to pass, at least that was the way J ack 
sized it up. The crowd must have kept count 
of the shots fired for when the last one took 
place they quickly picked themselves up from 
the floor, or tcrawled out from their safety-first 
hiding places, and gathered around Bill and f 
Black Pete who were still at it. | 

Whether it was due to the final breaking down f 
of his courage, failing strength, too much hootch f 
or the superior tactics of the trained athlete, j 
was not apparent, but slowly Bill overpowered | 
his opponent, threw him over his shoulder, when | 
he struck the floor on his back, and pinned him 
down so that he could not move. After all had 
seen that Black Pete was helpless Bill let him 
up. 

There was wild cheering for the victor and ! 
some one brought Bill a big glass of forty-rod. ' 

“You have well earned it boy and you need 
it,” he said as he offered the glass to him. 

“I never drink,” said Bill and it was given 
instead to Black Pete to revive him again. 



“BLACK PETE DID PULL THE TRIGGER EVERY CHANCE HE 

GOT.” 


■Page 75 


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... 4 ^ ^'•: ' 1 -: ' 


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BILL AND BLACK PETE MET 77 

‘‘When the latter had regained his feet, and 
recovered from the shock a little, he offered no 
explanation for his defeat, but in his deep 
humiliation he moved over toward the door to 
make as dignified an exit as he could in the 
quickest possible time. 

“Hey, where are youse goinV’ Bill called out 
after him. “Come back here and sit down at 
this table and let’s be friends, for I never holds 
a grudge after I have downed me man. Sit 
down here, I wants to tell youse something. ’ ’ 

Black Pete reluctantly did as Bill requested 
and the crowd surged round them to hear what 
it was this boy from down under had to say to 
him. 

“I takes it you’re a bit loaded with licker to- 
night and perhaps I had the ’vantage of youse 
for I never lets any of that hootch stuff inter- 
fere with me phys-e-que, see? Now you think 
you’re some scrapper don’t you? Well maybe 
you are, and I’ll give you a fair chanst. To- 
morrer youse keep away from the bug- juice, 
see ? and come ’round in de evenin ’ and I ’ll spar ’ 
a few rounds with youse — tree rounds ull be 
about enough— just a friendly bout for the 
sport it will give these gents here. Marquis 


78 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


Queensbury rules or sluggers rules, I don ’t oare 
which. Youse can go now,’’ and Black Pete 
promptly sneaked off wishing that an earth- 
quake would open a gulch through Circle and 
swallow up him. Bill, Jack and everybody else, 
but it didn’t. 

All the next day Black Pete wondered how he 
could get out of the ‘friendly bout’ that Bill 
was so willing to pull off for the mere fun of the 
thing. He didn’t know what the Marquis of 
Queensbury rules were but he finally came to 
the conclusion that he was a better man than 
his opponent and that the only way he could 
retrieve his standing in Circle was to give the 
Keed the beating of his life. 

Curiously enough he did ‘cut out the booze’ 
just as though he had paid Bill for the advice 
and then he proceeded to get into his best fight- 
ing trim. 

“I knock heem face een eef I ever heet heem,” 
he said talking to himself, and then to prove to 
his own satisfaction that he could do it he made 
four well defined dents in the pine board wall 
with a smashing blow of his 'fist. 

“An’ you said these folks up here was all of 
the peace-lovin’ garden variety, and never use 


BILL AND BLACK PETE MET 79 

a gnn/’ Bill said soberly when they were in 
their room after the fracas. 

‘T thought they were,’’ replied Jack. 

‘‘You thought they were?” and Bill looked 
at him as though he had caught him breaking 
the n^^ commandment. “Well don ’t youse think 
again, Buddy, or youse might hurt yourself, 
see?” 


CHAPTEE V 


OUTFITTING AT CIRCLE 

I N the great hall everything was as quiet as 
the faces on the totem poles that reared 
their ugliness into the air on either side of the 
Grand Palace Hotel. While the night before 
had been the most exciting of any that the oldest 
pioneers of Circle could remember since the 
days of ^94, in the broad light of the morning 
after, it seemed as though ‘Ghe makings of it 
had just melted away,” as Bill expressed it. 

The boys found Hoc Marling in the ‘ office ’ of 
his hotel which meant that he was standing back 
of the register and ink-bottle. He greeted his 
paying guests mournfully and when Jack in- 
quired what he had on his young mind that 
grieved him he pointed to the frame-work which 
had held the largest mirror north of Dawson 
so short a time before as yesterday. It only 
went to prove how fragile are mirrors and the 
mutability of things in general. 

8o 


OUTFITTING AT CIRCLE 


8i 


‘‘My looking-glass is busted/^ he said fu- 
neral-like, “and I^m out just three hundred 
cold dollars in gold. ^ ’ 

“I don’t see how you could blame us because 
a patron of yours thought he’d let daylight 
through me. Black Pete started it and it’s up 
to you to make him settle for it,” suggested 
Jack. 

“He hasn’t got anything to settle with; that’s 
the worst part of it, ’ ’ he replied, fishing. 

‘ ‘ Then you orter take it gentle-like outen his 
hide.” This from Bill. 

“Well, I kinda allowed that you about did 
that thing last night,” said Doc, “and bein’ 
somewhat of a philosopher I allowed too that 
while the glass was worth three hundred dollars 
it was worth well nigh that amount in gold dust 
to see him take his medicine. ’ ’ 

“That’s a pleasant way to look at it, Mr. 
Marling, and now,” said Jack, “we want you 
to tell us which of these stores here is the best 
place to buy our outfit.” 

“They’re all all right. Bht you ought to 
go and make the acquaintance of Jack McQues- 
ten over there at the N. C. {Northern Commer- 
cial Company's) store. He is the daddy of 


82 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


Circle for he set up a tradiiC post here as soon 
as the pioneer prospectors begin to come in. 
Jack’s a man that seventeen dog-sleds loaded 
with moose-hide sacks of gold couldn’t budge 
from the straight and unerrin’ path of rec- 
titude, is Jack, and he’ll fix you lads up bully 
and 0. K.,” he told them. 

So the boys went over to the N. C., and while 
Jack McQuesten’s fame had reached them down 
as far as Skagway, Bill Adams’ fame had pre- 
ceded them that morning from the hotel. The 
old trader was sitting on a box when they came 
in and they saw right aw^ay that he was a 
pioneer of the old school. A low, broad 
brimmed hat, without a dent or crease in it, set 
squarely on his head, and a pair of keen gray 
eyes, about half closed as if he didn’t want 
to see too much at a time, was boring holes 
through thejn. 

He was full-faced, his nose was broad and 
his mustache gray ; it was plain to be seen why 
he had been entrusted with hundreds of thou- 
sands of dollars by the various companies 
whose trading posts were famous all over 
Alaska. He was, as Hoc Marling had said, as 
straight as a die and he knew character, even 


OUTFITTING AT CIRCLE 83 

as characters knew him. He was dressed like 
a miner and the only outstanding feature of 
his rig that the boys caught sight of was a mag- 
nificent gold watch chain and charm — and he 
had a watch to match them in his pocket — ^which 
^had been presented to him by the Order of 
Pioneers, for of the first of the hardy pioneers 
of Alaska, he was the very first. 

‘^Mr. McQuesten,^^ began Jack, ‘‘we came 
over to get a winter’s supply of grub and an 
outfit fit for an arctic expedition.” 

J ack McQuesten took a good look at Bill and 
said with a twinlde in his eye, “so you are the 
young chap that whipped Black Pete — well I’ll 
be dog-goned. But let me give you a pointer, 
be careful how you handle him for his ways 
are not our ways — and we can’t be responsible 
for them. It’s the first time in the history of 
Circle he has not done up his man and he isn’t 
any too particular how he does it, so watch out 
he doesn’t knife you.” 

“We’ll be careful all right, from now on, 
Mr. McQuesten, believe me,” returned Bill. 

“He’s out of his latitude,” put in Jack — 
that is Jack Heaton; “he ought to be ashamed 
of himself living up here on the Arctic Circle 


84 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

with white people instead of being down there 
on the Tropic of Cancer with the rest of the 
greasers 

^Tf he pulls any of that Chilili Mex stuff on 
me to-night Vll send him so far hedl need a 
weegie board to get back to earth on, but I^m 
thankin’ you Mister McQuesten for tollin’ me 
as how I should be careful, sir, ’ ’ Bill said in an 
apologetic voice, perhaps because he had let 
Black Pete off so easily the night before. 

‘^Now to get dow]i to business, Mr. Mc- 
Questen,” began Jack who was anxious to get 
things a-moving. ‘‘What we want is an outfit 
of clothes, mess-gear and grub that will carry 
us through the winter. We’re not going so far 
away but what we expect to get back before the 
last ice and first water but we might want to 
keep on going and we must have an outfit so 
that we can pull through if needs be.” 

“What you want is an outfit for about eight 
months but you couldn’t begin to pack it on 
your backs or haul it on sleds, ’ ’ the old outfitter 
explained; “such an outfit would weigh in the 
neighborhood of eight hundred or a thousand 
pounds, and a man can’t carry more than fifty 
pounds or haul more than one hundred pounds 


OUTFITTING AT CIRCLE 85 

on a stretch. What you ought to have is a 
couple of dog-sleds.^’ 

^^Perzactly agreed Bill, ^‘and the question 
now is can we get the dogs.’^ 

There are -some very likely dogs in and 
around Circle that I might be able to pick up 
for you and 111 see the men who own them over 
at the Palace to-night. Ill go ahead and outfit 
you on the strength of your being able to get 
the dogs.’’ 

^ ‘ Good ! ’ ’ ejaculated Jack. 

‘‘First of all the things you’ll wear,” the old 
trader struck out genially and his eyes twinkled 
more merrily than ever for here was big 
business staring him in the face — a volume of 
it such as he had not transacted since the palmy 
days of Circle these many years agone. 

The boys were all attention. 

“You’ll want a couple of suits of waterproof 
underwear, a Mackinaw coat and breeches for 
early winter and spring; a caribou skin coat 
with the fur on which has a hood fixed to it; 
a pair of moosehide or bearskin breeches, a 
couple of pairs of moccasins and muk-luhs 
apiece and about a dozen pairs of German sox. ’ ’ 

“Whoa, Buddy,” sang out Bill, “I wouldn’t 


86 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


wear a pair o’ them Boche socks if I had to 
go barefoot, see?” 

‘‘That’s only the name of them, boy; why 
they make them down there in Dawson,” ex- 
plained Mr. Jack, the storekeeper. 

“Well, I might wear ’em in a pinch then,” 
said Bill. 

“Then you must have fur mittens that are 
lined with wool ; several pairs of woolen mittens 
to wear when you are building your log cabin, 
heavy fur caps and fur lined sleeping bags. 
Of course there will be towels and handker- 
chiefs and all of that sort of small stutf.” 

As the storekeeper enumerated the various 
items of clothing, he brought them forth and 
laid out two piles, one for each of the boys. 

“Now let me tell you something about taking 
care of these fur clothes ; if you expect them to 
last you for more than a month take my advice 
and keep them dry, or if they do get wet, don’t 
wait but stop where you are, build a fire and dry 
them then and there. I don ’t care how low the 
quick falls you can’t get cold in one of these 
suits. 

“Oh, yes; I almost forgot your eye shades 
but they are absolutely necessary in traveling 


OUTFITTING AT CIRCLE 87 

over the snow on bright days, and he produced 
a queer looking pair of goggles without any 
glasses in them. ‘‘These are Esquimo shades 
and I wouldn’t give a cent for any other kind,” 
he said as he handed the boys a pair. 

They examined them closely and found that 
they were made of wood and where the lenses 
were supposed to be in a pair of goggles there 
were thin pieces of wood instead with a couple 
of slits in them to let the light through. Jack 
and Bill put them on and made puns and had 
fun over and out of them. Jack pretended he 
was a college prof and then gave an imitation of 
Teddy Roosevelt. Not to be outdone, Bill 
gave an imitation of Jack giving an imitation of 
him, and then he wound up by pretending he 
was Judge Gilhooley of the Harlem Police Court 
and promptly sentenced himself to pay a fine of 
seven dollars and twenty-three cents for falsely 
(or badly) impersonating Hizzoner, 

Jack McQuesten laughed at their antics until 
his sides ached and the boys laughed too, and 
altogether Circle wasn’t such a bad town as 
they had painted it. 

“You’ll take these eye shades more seriously 
when you have to use them and you’ll thank 


88 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


your Uncle Jack for giving them to you, for 
they leave no bad after effects as glass goggles 
do when you take them off. 

‘‘Next comes the hardware,’’ he went on ex- 
plaining as he had to a thousand, yes ten thou- 
sand, te7iderfeet, in the past, and he thoroughly 
enjoyed living over again those golden days. 
“I call everything hardware that you can’t eat, 
wear, use for medicine, hunt or fish with, except 
the dogs. 

“You’ll need quite a lot of hardware includ- 
ing snowshoes and sleds, a wall tent, tarpaulins 
and compasses, for travehng. For building 
your cabin you will want a five-foot cross-cut 
saw, a rip and a hand saw, an ax, hammer and 
some other carpenter tools, besides nails, 
hinges, rivets and such like traps. 

“For cooking a folding sheet-iron stove, 
pans, coffee pot, tin plates, cups, knives, forks 
and spoons. You say you’ve got a good single 
barrelled repeating shotgun and a hunting knife 
apiece? You must take along plenty of loaded 
shells and I will fix up all of the fishing tackle 
you want. For your prospecting outfit you 
must take a prospector’s pick and a miner’s 
pick with a steel point, a shovel with a round 


OUTFITTING AT CIRCLE 89 

point such as we use up here, a magnet, a few 
pounds of quicksilver, a gold pan, a small gold 
scale to weigh your winnings on and a magni- 
fying glass. 

‘‘And now for the grub. This will include 
flour, com-meal, yeast in cakes and baking 
powder ; evaporated fruits, potatoes, onions and 
vegetables; sugar and saccharin tablets; ham, 
bacon and salt pork ; about a hundred pounds of 
Alaska strawberries and hardtack for emer- 
gency rations, also a lot of pemmican for the 
same purpose; some tea, coffee and condensed 
milk, soap and oleomargarine ; salt and pepper, 
and a few other little things I shall not forget to 
put in. You have a medicine easel What have 
you got in it I’’ he asked, for Jack McQuesten 
had taken a great interest in these two ‘down 
east^ boys and he intended to see that they had 
enough of everything and the right kind of 
things — that is if they ever started. 

Jack told him it had bottles containing quinine 
pepsin, cathartic pills, calomel and migrain. 

“No drug kit is complete up here unless you 
have arnica for stiff joints and strained muscles 
and boracic acid for blistered and aching feet.’^ 

The old trader was in no hurry to get the 


90 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

outfit together that day for he knew there was 
going to be a fight to the finish in the evening 
and knowing Black Pete better than he cared to 
and not knowing Bill Adams at all, he allowed 
that, like as not, the boys wouldn’t need any- 
thing further unless it was one or two spruce 
boxes. 

Looks to me as if Mr. Jack is tryin’ to sell 
us his store and is goin’ off to new diggings,” 
yawped Bill when he looked over the list Jack 
had made as the storekeeper called off the items. 
‘‘An’ what’s the quicksilver for anyway — to 
fill up the thermometer tube when the bottom 
drops out o’ itr’ 

Jack laughed at his pal’s little joke. “No, 
to dissolve out the gold when we find it in 
quartz.” 

“I suppose we’ll have to take it and pay for 
it and all them other prospectin’ tools just to 
make things look regular, but we ’ll throw them 
away as soon as we gets outer sight. We’re 
after gold in sacks, not in handfuls,” said Bill. 
“Why man alive it ’ud take a freight car to 
transport all the stuff he ’s goin ’ to sell us ; and 
besides, think o’ the skads o’ spondulicks we’re 
goin’ to have to cough up fer it all, too.” 


OUTFITTING AT CIRCLE 


91 


‘^You must remember that weVe got to live 
all winter, Bill, and McQuesten knows just what 
he’s about.” 

^‘An’ what’s them Alaska strawberries! — a 
hundred pounds o ’ them ! — he must think we ’re 
goin’ to a Fourth Ward Picnic or a strawberry 
festible. Do you know Jack I’m goin’ to have 
some o’ them night-bloomin’ strawberries for 
supper if I has to tip that slant-eyed, Hong- 
Kong cook at the hotel a four bit piece. 

‘T suppose you’ve eaten pemmican, haven’t 
you Bill!” 

‘T’ve eaten most everything from cJiichen-d- 
la-King with youse at the Ritz-Carlton to a 
pair 0 ’ old rubber boots when I was shipwrecked 
at sea. It seems to me I’ve heard that word 
pemmican somewhere afore in my bright 
log-book o’ youth, but I can’t say as how I ever 
sat down to a tahle-de-hoty dinner where it was 
served and that I knew I was partakin’ of it at 
the same time. Explain it to me and maybe I’ll 
remember it by the way it smells.” 

‘‘Pemmican,” began Jack, “is like Irish stew, 
Hungarian goulash, chop-suey or chili-con-carne 
in that there is a general recipe for making it. 
But cooks take even more liberties than poets ; 


92 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

consequently no two brands of pemmican 
are made the same, and, hence, cannot taste, 
or smell, alike, but the two things that all of 
them have in common are filling and staying 
qualities for either man or dog. 

Pemmican is usually made of meat ground 
up and grease added to it when it is cooked, 
and some makers put pea-flour and other veg- 
etable ingredients into it to make it cheap. A 
pound of it will not fill a cup and you can eat it 
every meal without getting tired of it. We 
used great lots of it — in fact almost lived on it — 
when I went on that Arctic expedition, and we 
fed it to the dogs too. 

‘‘Rear Admiral Peary had his pemmican 
made to order to get the full food value out of 
it; his recipe called for lean beef ground fine, 
two thirds part, and this was mixed with beef 
fat, one third part, to which was added a little 
sugar and some raisins. The pemmican for 
the dogs is made of cats, dogs, horses or any 
other kind of meat that is cheap. What this 
pemmican is like that we are going to get here 
I haven T the faintest idea, but it doesn’t matter 
much for we’re not going to use it as a steady 
diet.” 


OUTFITTING AT CIRCLE 


93 


‘‘One thing is sure, other prospectors have 
et it and what they can eat we can eat if we 
have to,’’ was Bill’s idea of it. 

On returning to the hotel Bill took Sing Nook, 
the Chinese cook to one side, pressed a fifty 
cent piece into his hand and told him it was 
his earnest desire to have some Alaska straw- 
berries for his supper by way of a little delicacy. 
^ “Velly welly,” returned the celestial dig- 
nitary who presided over the joss-house of pots 
and pans; “I glivee you pleanty Alaska 
stlawbellies flor slupper.” And so that was 
easily fixed. 

When Bill sat down to partake of the rations 
that evening he waited patiently for the Alaska 
strawberries to come under his observation ; but 
none materialized as far as his acute judgment 
of the luscious fruit was concerned. As soon 
as the meal was over and the diners had dis- 
persed Bill got Sing into a corner and sang him 
a song without music, but the words of which 
ran something like this: 

“I gave you four bits this afternoon to get 
me a helpin’ o’ Alaska strawberries. You took 
my good money but you failed to deliver the 
goods. Now what have you got to say for your- 


94 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

self, you Shanghai colored son of a Pekin 
pigtail/’ 

‘‘Allee samee I dlid glivee you Alaska stlaw- 
bellies flor slupper. You no catchee ’em?” 
Sing asked very much surprised. 

^^No, I didn’t catchee ’em and if you don’t 
catchee ’em for me right now youse ’ell catchee 
a couple of ’em in the eye, I’m a thinkin’.” 

Sing had seen what Bill had done to Black 
Pete and he had a very wholesome respect for 
this boy with the ‘^velly badee facee,” so he 
hustled out into the kitchen and was soon back 
with an enormous bowl of beans, which he set on 
the table. 

What’s this?” questioned Bill sharply. 

‘‘Alaska stlawbellies, allee samee you havee 
tonlight for slupper.” 

“Holy cat!” cried Bill in an awful voice* 
“I’ve been stung!” 

Sing in the meantime had become very much 
alarmed over the misunderstanding but when 
he heard Bill guffawing in appreciation of the 
joke, he joined in heartily. Bill had learned 
two things ; namely, what Alaskan strawberries 
are, and that a Chinaman has a sense of humor. 


OUTFITTING AT CIRCLE 


95 


There was a larger gathering of the North- 
men in the Grand Palace Hotel that night than 
there had been since the last election. They 
came in like spooks at a seance, apparently mate- 
rialized out of thin air, but unlike the latter, 
you would have to admit that they looked 
mighty like hard and fast, flesh and blood hu- 
man beings ; and further they refuse to demater- 
ialize until they had seen what they came forth 
to see. 

As was his wont. Rip Stoneback, who had 
been prospecting for gold in these parts for the 
last quarter of a century but whose innumera- 
ble disappointments had not affected his musi- 
cal talent, was on the platform, but he was not 
fiddling. Rene and his big brown bear were 
there too but they were not executing any fancy 
steps or doing any funny stunts, for the gather- 
ing that night were neither interested in the 
goddess of music, nor of the dance, nor, again, 
of comedy. 

What they were there to see was a man’s 
game that had originated in the primeval world, 
had been handed down while man was in the 
process of development, and has since bided in 


96 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


communities that are far more cultured than 
Circle. It was the old spirit of the fight that 
called them and they were there to a man. 

The tables, which were always scattered round 
the hall, where divers and sundry games with 
the pasteboards were played of an evening, had 
all been set back against the walls and the chairs 
piled up around them. Just why Doc Marling 
had seen fit to move them off the floor was 
not apparent unless he thought it was going to 
be a sprinting match instead of a pugilistic con- 
test. There w^as enough room in the hall for 
a dozen squared rings. 

He had also removed all of the breakable 
assets to better protected places, his bump 
of precaution having been enlarged by the un- 
fortunate breaking of his three hundred dollar 
‘Tookin ’-glass’’ that was the pride of Circle 
and the envy of towns up and down the Yukon 
Eiver for a hundred miles in either direction. 

Conversation was being carried on but it 
was of a tense kind and low, and not at all 
like the big voiced, open hearted talk that is 
the way of these free men of the Northland. 
And all because a seasoned man, but a bully, 


OUTFITTING AT CIRCLE 


97 


was going to do battle with a stripling who 
hailed from a place they had heard spoken of 
as New York. 

Bill had seen fights, yes, he had had fights 
ever since he could remember and in later years, 
as a member of the Harlem Athletic Club, he 
had watched some friendly bouts of give and 
take and had himself participated in so many 
battles that the fact he was going to fight Black 
Pete had no more effect on him than if he had 
been going to spar with Jack. 

Black Pete was in a different mood. He too 
had had his fights but they were far between 
and rough and tumble ones at that with men 
who, like himself, knew nothing about the science 
of the game, and usually he came out on top. 
Failing in this he had used his knife on men 
who downed liim, and once he shot a man. A 
bully sooner or later, though, will meet his 
match and when Black Pete met Bill he was 
scheduled for a K. 0. (knockout). 

At nine o ^clock, or thereabouts, the proprietor 
walked over to the place where the bout was 
to be pulled off and made this announcement: 

‘‘We have with us to-night Black Pete, 


98 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

cliampeen all round pugilist of Alaska and Bill 
Adams, the New York Kid, in a friendly bout 
and may the best man win. ’ ’ 

Black Pete came on to the center of the floor 
full of dash and dog. Then Bill came on and 
held out his hand but Black Pete refused to 
shake, so Bill shook hands with himself, just 
like that. Evidently Pete was not going to 
fight according to approved ring rules. Instead 
he swung a vicious right hander at BilPs head. 
Bill ducked it and laughed and he knew his man 
was slow. 

Then by sparring and feinting he drew from 
Pete rights and lefts with the force of a sledge- 
hammer back of them but which Bill side- 
stepped or ducked. It was not long before 
Pete showed signs of getting tired of hitting 
the air. As Pete had told himself, if he could 
ever hit Bill he would smash in his face; the 
power was back of his blows all right but the 
trouble was that Bill wouldn’t stand still long 
enough to let him do it. 

Bill, who was as lithe and nimble on his 
feet as a cat, was everywhere around his oppo- 
nent at once and kept him on the go following 
his tactics. Then Bill must have gotten care- 


OUTFITTING AT CIRCLE 


99 


less for Black Pete gave him a wallop on the 
jaw that sent him whirling a dozen feet. Now 
for the first time Pete’s friends egged hi m on 
and yelled “give it to him again.” 

Then Pete, encouraged by his lack, rushed 
Bill, but he was not to be caught napping again. 
He warmed up to his work and tapped Pete on 
the nose, making it bleed, on the jaw, making 
it hurt, in the mouth, making it swell and in 
the eye making it black ; in fact he hit him any 
and everywhere he wanted to and so fast did 
he hammer him that Pete got bewildered and 
began to strike out in every direction in the 
hope that some of his blows would land on his 
enetny’s anatomy, and so another did. It was 
a glancing blow and scraped Bill’s cheek so 
hard it nearly ripped the knife scar open. 

“Wind him up Bill,” called out Jack. 

“All right,” his partner answered, and with 
that he gave Pete one of his famous ’ospital 
punches and he went to the floor in a heap. 

Jack went over to Pete and slowly counted ten 
and as he still failed to show any signs of intel- 
ligence he counted him out. Pete’s friends 
carried him over to a corner where he came too 
a half hour later and then they put him to 


loo JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


bed. He had had ‘‘a yard and a half over 
plenty,’’ as Bill would say. 

Rip sawed away again on his fiddle, Doc 
put the tables back on the floor, Rene danced 
and wrestled with his good-natured bear and the 
men played cards again, but no one asked Bill 
or Jack to have a drink, a cigar or a bullet as 
long as they were in Circle. I dare say that 
the veriest tenderfoot can now go into the 
Grand Palacei Hotel and he will be treated 
as considerately as he would in the Waldorf- 
Astoria, in New York, the Blackstone in Chi- 
cago or the Palace in San Francisco. 

The next morning after the bout Black Pete 
lit out for other diggings and he has never been 
seen in Circle since. In this primitive way 
then are bad breeds often made into better men. 


CHAPTER VI 


MUSH, YOU HUSKIES, MUSH 

W HEN pioneer Jack McQuesten saw Bill 
deliver the final blow that knocked 
Black Pete out he knew he was safe in going 
ahead with the boys’ outfit. He also made it 
known that very night that they were in the 
market to buy some dogs, that nothing but 
the best would be good enough for them and 
that he himself would pick them out. The 
result was that within the next two or three 
days there was quite a bunch of dogs in Circle, 
enough I should say to make up half-a-dozen 
dog-teams. 

‘^How many dogs do you reckon we’ll need 
to haul our outfit?” Bill wanted to know. 

‘^What do you say, Mr. McQuesten?” Jack 
put it up to the storekeeper. 

‘‘You could get along with five or six dogs to 
the team, but seven will give you much better 
service and besides, if any thing should happen 

lOI 


102 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


to any of them, you would be in no danger of 
getting stuck.’’ 

‘Tt’s better to have too many than too few,” 
said Jack Heaton. 

Then they went out and took a look at the 
dogs and they were of all the kinds used in 
Alaska. Among the lot that were offered the 
boys were some genuine Eskimo dogs or 
malamutes as they are called, a number of 
huskies, which are a mixture of various breeds 
of dogs that have been brought into Alaska, 
with the native Indian dogs; a few Siwash, or 
common Indian dogs and the rest were outside 
dogs of various breeds. 

‘Ht’s like buyin’ a necktie in a department 
store — any of ’em would do but when you see 
’em all together you don’t know which one you 
like the best,” confided Bill. Now if they was 
hawses ” 

‘‘Leave it to me Bill,” broke in Jack; “it’s 
been a month of Sundays since I’ve had any- 
thing to do with dogs and dog teams but I’ll 
pick out the best of the bunch with Mr. McQues- 
ten’s help. The malamute was the only kind of 
dog we used in the Arctic and we’ll buy all of 


MUSH, YOU HUSKIES, MUSH 103 

them there are here — ^what, only fonr^ — ^not 
enough for even one team. Can^t you get us 
three more of these malamutes, Mr. McQuesten, 
so that we’ll have at least one team of them?” 
asked Jack. 

‘‘These are all that I know about. It’s a 
great day when you see any one with a matched 
team of any kind of dogs. The husky is just 
as good a dog, or better for these parts, and 
there are five of them. You’ll have to make out 
with outside dogs for the others.” Then he 
whispered in Jack’s ear, “I wouldn’t take any 
of those Indian dogs if I was you, for they are 
the worst kind of thieves and will keep your 
teams in bad blood all of the time. But I will 
say they are good work dogs.” 

“You’re in the know, Mr. McQuesten, and 
I’ll take your tip,” replied Jack. 

This buying of dogs was an entirely new 
phase of business to Bill and he took in every 
word that the pair of Jacks, by which I mean 
Messrs. McQuesten and Heaton, were saying 
and to the remarks, arguments and laudations 
that the owners of the various dogs made and 
were having by and between themselves. It 


104 jack HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

must be admitted that Bill stood at the foot 
of the pass when it came to knowing anything 
about these work dogs. 

‘‘Tell me this, Jack,’^ Bill whispered so that 
no one might learn of his profound ignorance, 
“what’s the diff’ ’tween a malamute and a 
husky?” 

“More than there is between a broncho and 
a mustang, though the dogs of a dog team are 
always called huskies, regardless of the kinds 
of dogs it is made up of. See those handsome, 
alert-looking fellows over there with their ears 
sticking straight up?” Jack nodded toward 
them; “well, they are the malamutes. 

“Their pointed ears are in that position for 
keeps, their noses are black and as sharp as a 
collie’s, while they have slitted eyes from which 
I shouldn’t wonder if the Eskimo got his idea 
for making his eye shades. Their pointed ears, 
keen eyes and sharp noses make them look as 
if they were ready to jump out of their hides. 
They’re the Ford motors of the Arctic region 
all right. Their close hair is about the color 
of a silver fox, and look at their tails ! two of 
them stand up like wireless masts and those of 


MUSH, YOU HUSKIES, MUSH 105 

the other two look as if they had been put 
over their backs with a curling iron. 

‘‘A husky looks a good deal like a malamute, 
for his ears are pointed too, but instead of being 
fixed in an upright position he can move them, 
so every once in a while you ^11 notice he will 
let them drop. He doesnH stand one, two, three 
though with the malamute for beauty.’’ 

‘‘McGargle over there says that dog drivers 
up here will take a husky anytime before they’d 
take a malamute. How do you make that out ? ’ ’ 
‘H make it out because McGargle has a couple 
of huskies he wants to sell. We’ll ask McQlies- 
ten anyway,” said Jack. 

‘H’ve just had a argument with my pard,” 
Bill said to the storekeeper as big as though he 
had all the inside information that is known 
about dogs,” and he says that the malamutes 
are the best and I says that the huskies are the 
best. Now what do you say I” 

huskies are supposed to be a little 
better workers for the kind of sledding we do 
in this part of the country, but speaking for my- 
self I prefer the malamute because the snow 
doesn’t stick between his toes as easily and his 


io6 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


feet are Larder. After all it’s only a matter 
of choice and usually what you can get. Both 
kinds of dogs were made by Almighty God for 
the work they have to do and they do it well. 

^^This is true too of the outside dogs; some 
of them are just as good workers and just as 
good in every respect as either the malamutes 
or the huskies. It isn’t a question of which 
dogs are the best any more now than in the days 
back there when a good dog brought two 
hundred and fifty, five hundred, yes, even a 
thousand dollars.”' McQuesten shook his head 
sadly. ‘‘But those good old days will never 
come back again.” 

Nearly all the time the boys were looking 
over the dogs, and bartering with their owners 
for them they made a bedlam of the peace and 
quiet of Circle with their ear-splitting barking 
and howling, and Jack asked Bill to observe 
that it was the malamutes and huskies that did 
the howling, while the Siwashes and outside 
dogs did the barking. 

“Whenever you find a dog barking, though 
he may look like a malamute or a husky you. will 
know to a certainty that he is not full blooded 


MUSH, YOU HUSKIES, MUSH 107 

but has some other strain in him,” explained 
Jack. 

An Indian had half-a-dozen Siwashes for sale 
and Bill made it his business to get a line on 
them. Not knowing, or let us say, forgetting, 
that the Indian dog has the meanest disposition 
in the world. Bill held out his hand and snapped 
his fingers at one of them. As a reward for 
his kindy notice the dog returned the com- 
pliment by snapping savagely at his hand and 
had he not been tied to a stake and Bill some- 
what of an acrobat, the brute would have made 
a partial meal from the extremity. 

^‘No Siwashes for mine,” Bill bellowed; 
wouldn^t have a team 0’ them Indian savages 
on a bet.” 

Having selected the dogs they wanted the 
dickering began in earnest between the boys and 
the various owners, with McQuesten as referee. 
They drove some pretty good bargains too, 
though it just so happened they were favored by 
a slump in the dog market at that particular 
time so that dogs that used to fetch a hundred 
dollars or more they bought for twenty-five 
dollars or less. 


io8 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


The upshot of it all was that the malamutes 
and the huskies cost the hoys in the neighbor- 
hood of twenty-five dollars apiece and the 
outside dogs from ten to fifteen dollars apiece. 
The outside dogs included a couple of cross-bred 
mastiffs, a couple of St. Bernards and a New- 
foundland. 

The boys paid over the money and got the 
names of the various dogs, which Jack wrote 
down, so that they would neither forget them 
nor get them twisted, for a dog will not respond 
to any save his own name any quicker than 
a man will, though he’s not so sensitive about 
it. The owners who had not been fortunate 
enough to have made sales took their dogs with 
them and went their way, but not happily for 
they knew not when Circle would see prospect- 
ors like these boys again. 

‘‘Now, men, bring the dogs over to the store 
and we’ll hitch them up for the boys,” said Mc- 
Questen. 

“What in thunder to?” Bill wondered, but 
never a questio'n did he ask. 

The men and the boys took a couple of dogs 
apiece and when they brought up at the store 
McQuesten went in and in a few minutes re- 


MUSH, YOU HUSKIES, MUSH 109 

turned with two sets of harness. These were 
made of strips of deerskin a couple of inches 
wide, fixed to rawhide traces. The strips were 
made into a loop that went round each dog^s 
neck to form a collar, and three strips, to 
which the trances were fastened, crossed his 
back, the first one just back of his forelegs, 
and the other two, which were fixed to the 
trace some fourteen inches apart, met on top 
of his back just in front of his hind legs. 

In front of the store were two small two- 
wheeled carts which are used in the various 
towns to transport goods on during the sum- 
mer months by means of dog teams. Then 
came the question of which should be the lead- 
dogs and which should be the wheel-dogs, as 
the dogs are called that are hitched in front 
and next to the sled, or in this case to the carts. 

Next, old Jack and young Jack separated 
the dogs into two teams-, with the plentiful ad- 
vice of their former owners and others who 
were looking on, and then with the aid of more 
than willing hands of the old timers the dogs 
were hitched up with all the malamutes in 
one team and all of the huskies in the other. 

‘^Now leUs get the names of these dogs 


no JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


straight, so that they 11 know when we’re talk- 
ing to them,” said Jack to Bill. 

First off, which team do yon want. Jack?” 
asked Bill, though he knew his partner, like 
himself, was strong for the malamutes. 

‘^Yon take whichever one you want. Bill.” 

‘‘Well, I’ll take the huskies if you don’t 
mind, ’ ’ he replied as if he meant it. 

“That wouldn’t be regular. Bill; we’ll draw 
straws and whoever gets the long one takes 
the malamutes. ’ ’ 

“No, I must have them huskies. They’re 
the best dogs, that’s what all the drivers say, 
an’ as I don’t know much about drivin’ dog- 
teams I orter have the best one, what say, Mr. 
Jack?” 

Jack McQuesten saw through Bill’s little 
game and his eyes twinkled for he had bored 
into Bill’s nature when he first saw him and 
he knew he had a heart as big as all Alaska. 

“Give him the team of huskies. Jack,” was 
McQuesten ’s decision; “Bill deserves them.” 

In Jack’s team of malamutes ’Frisco was the 
lead-dog, with Wolf, Jennie, Tofty, Jim and 
Prince after him while Skookum was wheel-dog. 
The team of huskies that Bill fell heir to was 


MUSH, YOU HUSKIES, MUSH in 

made up of Sate, the leader, and after him came 
Caro, Lukeen, Danny, Lon, Moosehide and Jinx 
for wheeler. 

How these dogs came by their names is, as 
Kipling used to say, another story, or, rather, 
more in the nature of a riddle, but we can make 
a guess at a few of them. For instance ’Frisco, 
who was a pure malamute, couldn’t have come 
from San Francisco, hence it is likely that his 
first 'owner had. Wolf, also a pure malamute, 
probably came by his name from having been a 
wolf killer. Tofty, from a town over near Fish 
Creek where he might have been bom, while 
Skookum means strong in the Chinook jargon. 
So much for Jack’s team. 

As to Bill’s team. Sate, it seems clear, is a 
contraction of Satan, and was so called because 
he was an imp of knowledge, as wise and wily 
as huskies ‘are made. Caro is a town over by 
Chandlar Lake, about a hundred miles north- 
west of Fort Yukon ; Lukeen got his name from 
old Fort Lukeen, on the Kushokwin Eiver, but 
on whose site the town of Kolmakoffsky now 
stands. He was a long, long way from the 
place where his slit-eyes first saw the light of 
day. Moosehide may have derived his cog- 


112 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


nomen by having eaten this delicacy when he 
was once starving to death, while Jinx is a name 
that is always associated with bad luck and he 
finally lived up to it. 

The storekeeper handed Jack and Bill a raw- 
hide whip apiece, about twelve or fourteen feet 
long, and told two of the drivers to give the boys 
a hand, which was his easy way of saying to 
show them how to manage the teams, for it 
takes much time and a deal of practice before 
a tenderfoot can drive these dogs by word of 
mouth and the crack of the whip. 

It was plain to be seen that the dogs were 
glad to be in the traces again and they all stood 
alert and ready for the word to mush, which 
means the same thing as the farmer’s gid-ap. 
While Jack had had some experience with driv- 
ing a dog team in the Arctic he was by no means 
an adept at it and poor Bill was as helpless 
as a pedestrian crossing Fifth Avenue at Forty- 
Second Street. But the men knew and the dogs 
knew what to do. 

There was a crack of a whip that sounded 
like a pistol shot, with a yell of ^^mush, you 
hushies,^^ and Bill’s team was at it and away. 
Another crack of a whip and another ‘‘mush 


MUSH, YOU HUSKIES, MUSH 113 

on’’ from Jack, when his team followed a close 
second in the wake of the other. It was great 
sport for the old timers watching the breaking 
in of the new teams and their new drivers. For 
the boys it was real hard work and they felt 
as though they were sweating blood in their 
efforts to keep the dogs under control. 

Every day from that time on Jack and Bill 
hitched up their dog teams and carted goods to 
and from the boat landing and the store for 
Jack McQuesten and when there was nothing 
else to do they would get on their carts and 
ride all round the town to the end that they 
might learn how to drive the dogs right and 
so that the dogs would get used to them. 

As both Jack and Bill were past masters in 
the game of handling horses they used the same 
tactics with the dogs — that is to say, they treated 
them decently and punished them only when 
they really needed it. At first the dogs didn’t 
know what the boys were up to, being so kind 
to them; they seemed to think it was a trick 
and some of them resented it. Now it has been 
said that malamutes and huskies have no atfec- 
tion for anyone, not even the man that feeds 
them, but Jack and Bill believed that dogs are 


114 jack HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

alike the world over and they proceeded to 
prove it by naaking friends with these work- 
dogs of the north. This in the face of the fact 
that the old timers told them that petting the 
dogs would spoil them, but the boys thought 
differently. 

Came then the first fall of snow and winter 
had set in. For the next week or so the boys 
drove their dog teams around hitched to the 
sleds and both did much walking on their snow- 
shoes. Like driving a dog team walking on 
snow-shoes requires practice, only not nearly 
as much, and while Jack had learned both of 
these things in the Arctic they were an entirely 
new means of transportation to Bill, but he took 
to them with avidity for they were in the nature 
of sport. 

A's I had occasion to remark in an earlier 
account of Bill, he could learn anything that 
had to do with the concrete, as for instance 
riding or shooting or athletics, but when it came 
to the abstract, such as extracting cube root, 
how wireless works or the way chemical ele- 
ments combine, he was as compact as the antlers 
of a bull moose. But he was like the rest of the 
human herd in that he would have given his 


MUSH, YOU HUSKIES, MUSH 115 

gold-tooth to be able to do wbat someone else 
could do, only it must have to do with the 
working of the mind. What Bill did have, 
though, was a good memory, but he lacked the 
fundamentals of education and this was where 
he fell down. But this has nothing to do with 
snowshoes and how he learned to use them. 

His first efforts at snowshoeing were like 
everyone ^s else, laughable in the extreme, and 
the natives who congregated to watch him 
roared as he spilled himself this way or that 
way and then must needs have assistance to 
get up again. Before he had done with it, 
though, he could walk on them very swiftly 
notwithstanding his rather short bowed legs 
and it was surprising how quickly he learned 
the swinging outward motion that must he 
acquired in order to become an expert. 

To cap the climax he laughed best at them 
by laughing last when he turned a complete back 
somersault with a pair of five-foot snowshoes 
on and that, as you will allow, is some very 
considerable trick. 

‘‘He’ll do!” as Jack McQuesten put it. 

A good deal of snow had fallen, the streams 
and rivers had frozen over so that the sledding 


ii6 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


•w^as good and it was getting around tlie zero 
mark. The long awaited day had arrived and 
Jack McQuesten had packed their outfit on the 
sleds, at the same time showing the boys how to 
do it. There is a wonderful knack in knowing 
how to pack, and the ‘‘freight-car’^ that Bill 
had declared they would need to carry their 
outfit, which the old trader had made up for 
them, his experienced hands compressed into 
two comfortable loads. It was next to impos- 
sible, as Jack said, to believe that such an enor- 
mous amount of stores could be contained in 
so small a space. 

The dogs were harnessed and they knew that 
now they were in for some real work but they 
were none the less anxious for the start. Then 
there emerged from McQuesten ’s store two 
strange figures dressed in furs from head to 
foot. They were neither Eskimos nor Indians 
but a look at them full in the face revealed that 
they were no other than a couple of youthful 
gold seekers who had come out of the far east 
and answered to the names of Jack and Bill. 
Truly they looked of the North, Northern. 

Finally just as the first dull streaks of day- 
light sifted through the thick air the cracks 


MUSH, YOU HUSKIES, MUSH 117 

of their rawhide whips broke the monotony of 
weeks of waiting and the orders to ‘‘mush on, 
you huskies’’ from both Jack and Bill who were 
at the handle bars of their sleds started the 
teams down the main street of Circle at a brisk 
pace. 

They crossed the Yukon Eiver and took the No 
Name Eiver that flows into it a little to the 
north of Circle and whose headwaters lay some 
forty miles to the east of it. By noon 'they cal- 
culated they had covered about fifteen miles and 
here they made their first stop, had a drink of 
hot tea from their thermos bottles and did 
justice to some other edibles that Sing Nook 
had knocked together for them, and they were 
not Alaska strawberries either. 

After they and the dogs had rested half-an- 
hour, they broke out their sleds, which means 
loosening the runners, which freeze and stick 
fast, by moving the sled sidewise with the gee- 
pole, and started up the river again. They 
didn’t make such good time now for the work 
was new and was telling on them even more 
than it was on the dogs. So by sundown they 
had made only ten miles more, but Bill said 
he thought that was doing mighty well under 


ii8 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


the circumstances and Jack thought so too. 
They had hoped, though, to make the head of 
the stream that night. 

‘‘Four days o’ this kind o’ goin’ will put us 
in the land o’ the Yeehats,” said Bill. 

They pitched their tent on the bank of the 
river and built a rousing tire just outside of it. 
Then they fed the dogs a generous piece of fish 
each, which is the principal diet of the dogs in 
Alaska; this done they got their own suppers 
and, just to see how it would go, they warmed 
up some penunican, got out the hardtack and 
made a big pot of coffee. 

Here it was that Bill was introduced to that 
celebrated food which was the chief factor in the 
discovery of the North Pole, though of course 
Peary and his malamutes and the Eskimos had 
something to do with it too. 

“Pemmican,” allowed Bill, making a face that 
would put shame to an ancestor on a totem-pole, 
“seems to be a concoction on the order o’ a 
brownstone house built up o’ schnitzel and arti- 
ficial rubber. I suppose it is all right though 
when everything else is all wrong but when we 
get there,” and he pointed somewhere in a 


MUSH, YOU HUSKIES, MUSH 119 

direction that might lead to the North Star, the 
one hundred and thirty-fourth parallel and 
New York, but meaning their winter quar- 
ters to be, ‘‘it will be venison steak for ours.^’ 

The dogs, tired after their first day’s work, 
since they had been idle all summer, had dis- 
appeared, having dug out holes in the snow and 
gone to bed. The boys, though they were dead 
tired too, were in no mood for sleep^ but in 
their fur clothes they were as warm as though 
ensconced in their own steam-heated homes, 
while the mellow glow of the candle light inside 
their tent gave it as cheery an aspect as a 
cluster of electric lights in a parlor. 

So they sat around for an hour or so after 
supper discussing their successful start, their 
outfit, the dogs and — not to be forgotten for a 
single moment — the gold they were after. It 
was good to know that here, far from the civ- 
ilized haunts of men, there were fourteen 
huskies, strong of leg and tough of feet, sleeping 
out there under the snow who could carry them 
to the farthermost ends of the frozen North if 
needs be. It gave them a great feebng of 
security. 


120 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


‘Tmagine us, Jack, a-drivin’ down Broadway 
or Fifth Avenoo! 'VVhat^d the people think 
anyway Bill dreamed in an audible voice. 

‘T opine we wouldn’t get very far,” replied 
Jack, laughing at this ridiculous idea of his 
pal’s. 

“I’d like to know why not?” queried Bill. 

“Because the Society for the Prevention of 
Cruelty to Animals wouldn’t stand for it for a 
moment. They would send the dogs to the 
Bide-a-Wee home and us to Randall’s Island.^ 
And then the tables would be turned for we’d 
get the dried fish and water and they’d get the 
pemmican, pink tea and ice cream. ’ ’ 

“I’m on. Buddy; what’s all right in one part 
o’ the United States is a crime in some other 
part o’ it. I guess we’ll stay right here with 
our huskies, eh. Jack?” 

“I’ll say we will for about six months — or 
until we find that gold.” 

“These Indian guys ain’t such slouches, are 
they?” went on Bill, who having filled up on 
pemmican was in a talkative mood. “Imagine 
them havin’ sense enough to hitch up a lot o’ 

^The reformatory in New York where bad boys are sent. 


MUSH, YOU HUSKIES, MUSH 121 


dogs and puttin’ them to work pullin’ loads. 
Some invention I calls it.” 

‘‘Oh, I don’t know,” said Jack. “While the 
Indians used dog teams before the white men 
came here, the Indians didn’t know anything 
about using a smart dog for a leader and driv- 
ing them by word of mouth. ’ ’ 

“How’d they do it, then?” 

“By having an Indian boy run ahead of the 
dogs and of course the dogs ran after him. It 
was the white man that put an intelligent dog 
ahead of the team to lead them. You must 
have noticed to-day that our lead dogs, ’Frisco 
and Sate, did mighty little real pulling but they 
kept the other dogs spread out and pulling their 
level best. And it’s the leaders who ho and 
mush and gee and haw when we yell at them and 
impart our orders to the other dogs of the 
teams. It ’s always the white man who puts the 
finishing touches on things he finds.” 

“We ’ll put the finishin’ touches on them sacks 
o’ gold, I’m sayin’,” Bill rejoin’ed and then 
calming down a bit he added, “when we finds 
’em.” 

The fire had burned low and the boys got 


122 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


into their sleeping bags, when they followed 
their dogs into the shadowy land of dreams. 
But while the dogs dreamed of getting their 
fill of fish just once, their young masters 
dreamed of enough yellow gold to last them for 
all time. 


CHAPTER VII 


IN WINTER QUARTERS 

T he barking and howling of the dogs woke 
the boys from a sound sleep. They 
quickly got out of their sleeping bags to see 
what it was all about and when they looked out 
of the tent they saw a pack of fourteen huskies 
with their mouths wide open and looking for 
all the world as though they were laughing, 
except when they were in the act of straining 
their vocal cords to make a noise. 

If they could have talked the boys would have 
heard them say, ‘^here, you sleepy fellows, get 
a move on yourselves, for we Ve got to do twenty 
miles to-day.^’ The handsome brutes were as 
playful and joyous as any of their tribe this 
side of the happy hunting grounds where all 
good canines go to when they die and where the 
‘‘toil of the trace and traiP’ are not known. 

On second thought, though, it may just be 
that they were not so particularly anxious to 
123 


124 jack HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

get into the harness again as it was that they 
had fond recollections of the dried fish they had 
eaten the night before, and that they were more 
than ready now for another helping of the same 
hyperbolical breakfast food. 

"While Jack fed them more generous portions 
of fish than they had ever known before, Bill 
proceeded to get their own breakfasts, of crisp 
bacon, real bread made by that heathen Chinese, 
Sing Nook, back there at Circle, and coffee with 
condensed milk and sugar in it. What more 
cotild they — could anyone^ — ^want! The boys 
couldn’t imagine. 

Now as long as they had followed the river 
their course had been due east and they didn’t 
have to worry about going in the right direction 
but when they reached the end of it their course 
lay north-east, which is, naturally, forty-five 
degrees between the points of the compass 
known as due north and due east. To follow 
this course they produced their compasses and 
while both J ack and Bill were perfectly familiar 
with the use of the instruments something 
seemed to be wrong with them, for instead of 
the needles pointing to the north as do all good 
compasses, they pointed almost due east, or to 


IN WINTER QUARTERS 125 

be exact they pointed to east hy north, which 
is eleven and one-fonrth degrees north of due 
east. 

*Tt^s twelve o’clock by both your watch and 
mine and there ’s the sun overhead on the 
meridian, so north must be up there and here’s 
these bloomin’ compasses a-pointin’ to the 
east,” complained Bill. ^^Here we are a thou- 
sand miles from nowhere and we don’t even 
know the blinldn’ north when we sees it.” 

‘‘Now don’t get excited. Bill, but let’s investi- 
gate this thing and reason out the whyness of 
the wherefore,” said Jack sanely, though he 
couldn’t understand it any more than did his 
“pard” Bill. 

They ,were so close to the north-pole the 
needles vibrated with dynamic energy and yet 
they fixedly held their positions north by east. 

“Maybe it’s the hardware in our outfit that’s 
affectin’ them, or the pemmican we had for 
lunch yesterday, or else the dogs have et a 
keg-o ’-nails afore we left Circle,” suggested 
Bill, who had a better idea of funning than he 
had of science. 

“There isn’t enough iron in our outfit to 
affect them as you can tell if you will walk 


126 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


around the sleds with your compass. It may 
be the pemmican, though, for I sort of feel as 
if there ^s a loadstone in my stomach. Leaving 
all joking aside, Bill, there is something here — 
some phenomenon we don’t understand,” re- 
turned Jack, thinking as he had never thought 
before. 

‘Tt may just be,” he went on, ^‘that there is a 
vein of iron ore running along in this direction 
which would of course account for the erratic 
behavior of the needles. If so we’ll soon get 
out of the range of its influence. What we’ll 
do is to call the point marked east on our com- 
pass cards north and then if we travel north 
hy east we’ll really be going in the right direc- 
tion, see?” explained Jack. 

‘‘It’s as clear as mud,” responded Bill, 
“we’ll have a nice time correctin’ the errors 
of these compasses when they are ninety degrees 
outen the way. You can use your compass if 
you want to but I’m goin’ by the blinkin’ Sun 
and the bloomin’ North Star, I am.” 

All that day as they were mushing on Jack 
kept tab on his compass and Bill kept his eye on 
the sun and while they both firmly believed 
they were headed right, the compass, by which 


127 


IN WINTER QUARTERS 

the mariner pushes boldly forward, steering 
always as it directs, knowing it will not send 
him astray, had the boys worked up into some- 
thing that very nearly approached a nervous 
state of mind. 

All the time they were on the march that 
afternoon the going was very much heavier 
than it had been on the No Name River, for 
they had to break the trail as they went along. 
Jack kept wondering what had come over the 
compasses that so persistently made them point 
east instead of north. 

When they had established camp that night 
they were still discussing the frivolous peculiar- 
ities of compasses which enabled them to point 
east when they were on top-o ^-the-world with 
the same degree of freedom that they pointed 
north when they were used on the rim-o’-the- 
world. 

The weather was crisp and cold and the air 
as thin and clear as crystal. Bill, who had lost 
faith in the instrument that is the symbol of 
unerring accuracy, stood forth in the night, 
looking more like some barbarian of the glacial 
age than a pampered boy of the gas-house 
district and viewed the twinkling lights in the 


128 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


bowl of the heavens. He called Jack and in- 
dicating the North Star with his finger said: 

‘‘Either that star is wrong and our compasses 
are right or the other way about, but ’tween you 
and me, Bud, I’ll bank on the North Star every 
time and dish the compasses.” 

“I know exactly where the trouble comes in. 
Bill; funny I couldn’t have thought of it 
before,” said Jack, brightening up as though 
his brain-cells had decohered. “The North 
Star and the compasses are both right. You 
know that the magnetic north pole and the true, 
or geographic, north pole are not in the same 
place. 

“In fact the magnetic pole is way south of 
the true pole — let nre see, if I remember rightly 
it is pretty close to the meridian which is one 
hundred degrees west of Greenwich and on the 
sixty-eighth parallel, and is, consequently, 
nearly twenty degrees south of the geographic 
pole. This is the reason, then, our compasses 
point to the east instead of to the north; the 
only thing we don’t want to forget to do is to 
allow for this difference.” 

“Right you are. Jack,” Bill made answer, 


IN WINTER QUARTERS 


129 


for of all times that his admiration for his 
partner welled in his breast it was when the 
latter explained what he called ‘‘this high-brow 
stuff/’ “Say if I had a brain like yourn I 
wouldn’t be up here seekin’ moosehide sacks 0’ 
gold, I’d be back there in little ole Noo York on 
Wall Street shovelin’ it into vaults ; that’s what 
I’d be doin’.” 

Having disposed of the vexatious problem 
of the North Pole Bill again took an interest in 
his compass and began figuring out how many 
points this way or that way they would have 
to go to get so many points the other side of 
somewhere else. Bill didn’t know it but up 
there in the cold, cold North he was developing 
his gray matter, for he was thinking and this 
is the only process by which it can be done. 

And so for the next three days they kept 
steadily onward over tundras, on streams, 
through wooded lands, up hills and down dales 
and always north by east. Nor did the boys 
feel a bit lonesome here in these vast stretches 
of the sub- Arctic ice and snow and the great, 
igrim solitude of nature but this may be ac- 
counted for in virtue of there being hardly 


130 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

ever a minute but that they were kept on the 
jump doing something for either themselves 
or the dogs. 

Neither were they without companions for 
the dogs were the most wonderful company 
ever. They showed the most amazing intel- 
ligence, particularly ’Frisco and Sate, and Bill 
was not far from the truth when he said 
‘‘they’re human and that’s all there is to it.” 
And in very truth so it seemed, for whatever 
they wanted to do or say, they knew precisely 
how to go about it, or to make themselves 
understood. 

“We still have another day’s journey before 
us,” Jack announced as they made their last 
temporary camp, and they were, indeed, getting 
pretty close to the end of the rainbow, for they 
were even then in the land of the Yeehats, which 
was the land of their golden hopes. 

But to Bill, instead of there being more gold 
the farther north they went, the snowscape 
grew more desolate and forbidding, for he was 
better acquainted with a semi-torrid climate 
than he was with a wholly frigid one, and to him 
the outlook was far from alluring. Jack who 
had spent nine months in the Arctic didn’t 


IN WINTER QUARTERS 131 

mind it a little bit. He bad the makings in liim 
of a polar explorer. 

Harking back to that July morning when Jack 
had unfolded the fascinating story of gold in 
moosehide sacks to him in his apartment, and 
now looking out upon the snow-veiled land as 
far as his eye could reach Bill again began to 
wonder if, after all, it wasn^t a fairy tale told 
by a writer of fiction, or, more likely, a hoax 
perpetrated by the early miners on the tender- 
feet who pestered them with questions. 

‘‘What I^d like to know is if this metal is 
really up here,” he finally said to Jack, “why 
haven’t men like Jack McQuesten, Doc Marling, 
Sam Stoneback and all the other old timers who 
have lived in Ilasker ever since gold was dis- 
covered, searched for and found this treasure.” 

Jack smiled cynically — that is, as cynically 
as a boy can smile. 

“You might just as reasonably ask me why 
the head door-keeper of the Stock Exchange 
has not made a fortune on the floor — ^lie’s on 
the ground too you know. Or why is it a boot- 
black sometimes becomes a millionaire, or a girl 
from Tin Can Alley rises out of the depths and 
is crowned a queen f” Jack argued. 


132 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

‘‘Or Bill Adams, of Claremont Avenoo, seek- 
in’ the yellow metal in the shadow o’ the North 
Pole, ’ ’ Bill commented and then he added, “I’m 
gettin’ to be some poet like Mr. Service, what 
say, Jack!” 

“Yes, this beautiful Northland will make a 
poet of anybody. But were the bootblack and 
the alley wench destined to do and become what 
they did do and did become?” Jack went on. 

“Is it because they thought their way up, or is 
the element of chance responsible for it all! 
Perhaps it is like pemmican, due to a little of 
everything mixed together. These are things 
for you to think about. Bill.” 

Bill mas thinking but he couldn’t think fast 
enough to keep up with Jack’s line of talk, 
though he had the satisfaction of knowing what 
his partner was driving at and this was more 
than he was sometimes able to do. 

“It sounds to me. Jack,” he finally said, “but 
I’m hopin’ as how you’re right. I wouldn’t 
take any stock in it cornin’ from any one else 
’ceptin’ yourself. Your hunches from the time 
I first knowed you has got the weegie board 
locked in a vault. An’ consekently I’m sayin’ 
as how I take it your hunch inkubator is in 


IN WINTER QUARTERS 133 

just as good workin’ order and reliable here in 
Ilasker, as it v/as down in Mexico/’ 

‘‘Now you’re talking sense,” said Jack, 
throwing out his chest, only it couldn’t be no- 
ticed from the exterior because his caribou coat 
was so big it covered up his abnormal expan- 
sion. “And see here. Bill, you want to cut out 
this ‘it sounds to me’ stuff. I’m not exactly 
what you call a Christian Scientist but we’ll 
never find the pot of gold if you’re going to 
keep doubting it all the time.” 

This little talk gave Bill some food for 
thought too, and he resolved that let come what 
may he would never show any signs of its 
“sounding to him” again. 

Along in the late afternoon of the next day 
they came to a river and Jack proclaimed that 
they had at last reached the end of their long 
trip. 

‘ ‘ This is the Big Black River aU right and if 
I haven’t missed my guess we are about ten 
miles below the Arctic Circle and fifteen or 
twenty miles west of the International boundary 
line. Put her there, old pard, we ’re in the land 
of the Yeehats at last!” 

“With nary a Yeehat in sight,” said Bill as 


134 jack HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

they grasped hands, ^‘but I^m goin’ to keep my 
rifle handy if it’s all the same to yon.” 

Then came the work of building their winter 
quarters which was to be a log cabin of one 
room about twelve feet wide and fourteen feet 
long. There were plenty of trees about, the 
chief kind being Alaska spruce, and owing to 
its abundance in the more northern parts of 
Alaska it is used for work of every descrip- 
tion, such as cabins, mining timber, firewood, 
sleds, etc. 

The first thing to be done was to fell the trees 
and they began by sawing them down with their 
crosscut saw. Bill said he would rather chop 
them down and that he could do it easier and 
quicker than both of them could do it together 
with the saw. While this work was in progress 
the dogs grew restless on account of their in- 
activity and enlivened things up every now and 
then with a fight; then Jack would go among 
them, like Daniel in the lion’s den, and use the 
butt-end of his whip handle on them until they 
broke apart. 

‘T’ll give you muts something to do that 
will take the fight out of you,” he told them, 
and he did, for as Bill felled each tree his 


135 


IN WINTER QUARTERS 

pardner, as he had now begun to call him, lashed 
a rope round an end and hitching the dogs to it 
put them to doing work the like of which 
none of them had ever done before. 

And pull? Why, boy, they pulled so hard 
that their muscles looked as if they would break 
through their hides. After he had broken out 
a log and was ready to start Jack would give 
his long whip a tremendous crack and yell mush! 
when every dog did his duty and they liked it 
too. 

It was a never ending source of wonder to the 
boys that these animals liked to work. And 
yet under the influence of kind treatment they 
were very affectionate, especially the mala- 
mutes, though none of them showed it in a way 
at all like dogs that live in the lap of luxury. 
Neither would it do to pet one of them to the 
exclusion of the others else there would be a 
terrific fight going on in an instant for they 
were fearfully jealous, and would not tolerate 
the slightest show of partiality. 

<<IVe got one o’ them high-brow ideas, Jack; 
I’ve been thinkin’ and thinkin’ as I’ve watched 
these huskies, and after what you told me about 
the way the dogs acted on the front over there 


136 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

in France, IVe conclooded they’ve got human 
brains just the same as you and me. They 
could talk if they wants to but they just pretend 
they can’t so they won’t have to argy with a 
feller. They’re just like them furriners in Noo 
York, they can savvy anything they wanter and 
anything they don’t wanter savvy — ^why they 
don’t.” 

‘‘Then you believe in reincarnation/^ said 
Jack. 

“Reindarnation!” was Bill’s near echo. I 
might believe in it if I knew what it is, but not 
knowin’ I cannot say.” 

Then Jack explained how some folks, includ- 
ing about four hundred million in India, 
believed that the souls of animals, when they 
died, passed on into the bodies of people. This 
was all easy enough for Jack to tell about but 
when Bill wanted to know what Jack meant by 
soul Ms partner had no small time telling him 
about it in a way that he could understand. 

“It sounds reasonable,” declared Bill, “and 
I would believe in this reindarnation thing only 
these dogs are so much decenter than most 
people.” 



“ ‘I’VE CONCLOODED THEY’VE GOT HUMAN BRAINS JUST THE 
SAME A‘S YOU AND ME.’ ” 

— Page 135 




IN WINTER QUARTERS 


137 


And so they worked and talked and talked and 
worked and another month slipped by before 
they got their log cabin done. The way Bill 
could swing an ax made J ack envious and while 
building the cabin was the hardest of hard work, 
both of these youngsters got a lot of pleasure 
seeing it go up log by log. And when it was 
all done they were as proud of it as any million- 
aire who ever built a mansion on Fifth Avenue. 

And furniture! They made mission fur- 
niture, table, chairs and all the accessories of 
home, the like of which no missionary in the 
heart of lightest Africa ever set eyes upon. 
And comfortable! With a rousing fire, ham 
and Alaska strawberries, coffee and biscuits 
that Jack made so well (I didnT say so light) 
they were as comfortable as a husky after a 
double ration of dried fish, fast asleep under 
the snow. 

‘‘I^m thinkin’ weVe got to get out and kill 
some fresh meat,’^ suggested Bill after a meal 
n which the spirit of Sing Nook was present, i.e., 
when the strawberries came on as usual. 

‘T thought you declared that Alaska straw- 
berries were every whit as good as the spaghetti 


138 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

we used to get at The Black Cat back in New 
York, when we thought we were a couple of 
highflyers,^’ Jack laughed. 

‘^Oh, for a dish of spaghetti,” sighed Bill, and 
then he came back with this statement : ^ ‘ Ilasker 
strawberries are all right but after you’ve 
et them for thirty or forty meals you get a 
lee-tle tired of them and pine for a young oyster, 
in a bowl of cracker soup, or a couple of fried 
eggs — one fried on one side and one on the other 
— or even a steak from a hoof of a panhandle 
longhorn. ’ ’ 

‘T move that to-morrow we begin ‘prospect- 
ing’,” Jack said, paying no attention to Bill’s 
likes and dislikes. “We’ve been away now for 
over three months* and all we’ve got to show 
for it is an outlay of more than a thousand 
dollars, these two mighty good dog teams, our 
cabin and the fun we’re having.” 

“Then let’s go to it,” Bill said. 

“We’ll strike out across the river and go due 
north ; then every trip wemiake we ’ll veer round 
five points until we ’ve boxed the compass. ’ ’ 


CHAPTER VIII 


ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE 

W HILE the boys did not expect to be gone 
longer than a week, or ten days at the 
most, on any one spoke of their prospecting 
wheel, and carried good grub to last them for 
this length of time, they nevertheless took the 
precaution to stock up with enough alcohol, 
compressed tea, hard tack and pemmican for 
themselves, and dried fish for the dogs, to stave 
off starvation for a month in the event of meet- 
ing with an accident, getting stormbound, or 
wanting to make a longer stay. 

With a team apiece of seven dogs and a load 
of only a hundred and fifty pounds it was pos- 
sible for them to ride on their sleds a good deal 
of the time. But this does not mean that they 
could very often actually sit on them but the 
way they did it was to stand on the rear ends 
of the runners and hold on to the handle bars. 
The night before they made their first trip 

139 


140 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

out they packed their traveling mess-gear, which 
consisted of a collapsible stove and alcohol for 
fuel, grub and the few other necessary things 
of their outfit, on the sleds, so that they could 
make a start the next morning at day-break. 

They crossed the Big Black Eiver and drove 
due north over the tundra (a Russian word, 
pronounced toon-draj) which is a rolling prairie, 
without any trees on it; the soil is black and 
soft, or muck as it is called, and on it both 
mosses and lichens grow. They drove due 
north and in the course of time Bill announced 
that according to the sun, his watch and his 
stomach there should be a period of rest and of 
eating. According to Jack’s calculations they 
had made about twelve miles and were more- 
over right then on the Arctic Circle. 

‘‘After we gets through with the eats. Jack, 
I wants you to edicate me on this Arctic Circle 
thing, ’ said Bill as he threw the dogs their fish. 

Jack was busy opening the thermos bottles of 
hot tea and getting out the sandwiches. 

“What do you want to Imow about it?” he 
asked absent-mindedly, for he was not a little 
bit interested in this at the particular moment. 

“I wants to know why is the Arctic Circle, 


ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE 141 

and everything^ else about the bloomin’ thing. 
The way IVe doped it out it is like a meridian 
or the equator, that is, it^s a line that you can’t 
see and yet it’s there or here just the same. 
I’m settin’ on it and I know it but I can’t prove 
it. As man to man, now, I’m askin’ you what 
is it?” asked Bill with great earnestness. 

Jack looked at him and laughed. 

‘‘You asked a question and then answered it 
yourself in the next breath. You’ve said all 
there is to say about it except that it’s a circle 
running round the North Pole like an ostrich 
feather on a lady’s hat, only, different from the 
latter, it extends on all sides of the pole to 
latitude sixty-six degrees and thirty-two min- 
utes north. 

“But why is it?” persisted Bill. 

Jack thought a moment. 

“The chief reason the Arctic Circle is so 
called is because it is the circle below which the 
sun does not drop in mid-summer. If we were 
here on the Arctic Circle in summer we’d see 
the sun at midnight just above the horizon, and 
the farther north a person goes in summer the 
higher he will see the sun above the horizon at 
midnight. Lots of tourists come up here every 


142 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

summer just to take a look at the midnight sun, 
and the natives call them simners.^^ 

^^An’ we won^t get to see it thenT^ kicked 
Bill; ‘‘it^s just my luck. If it ^ud be rainin’ 
soup I’d be standin’ out in it with a fork.” 

^‘We’re not up here to see the sun at mid- 
night,” Jack came back at him, “we’re lucky 
if we get a glimpse of it at noon. What we’re 
up here for is to get the yellow stuff.” 

“Oh yes, I kinda lost sight o’ the bloomin’ 
gold for a minute,” was Bill’s reply. 

It was great sport, now that their loads were 
light, for the young drivers to flourish their 
whips and crack them in the dry air, while the 
dogs, fed-up, fresh fand eager, raced along, 
with tinkling bells where the going was good, 
as though they were making a dash for the pole. 
The boys and their outfit would have made a 
capital movie, but there wasn’t a cinematograph 
camera nearer than Skagway on the south or 
St. Michaels on the west. 

At this time of the year, the period of day- 
light on the Arctic Circle is very short and as 
darkness came on they pulled up on the banks 
of a stream to make camp. 

“This must be the Rat River,” said Bill. 


ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE 143 

‘ ‘ It is, but it certainly isn ’t much at this point. 
We’re close to its head waters though and that 
accounts for it. It empties into the Porcupine 
River about sixty or seventy miles west of here. 
It might be worth our while to make a survey 
up and down the river for a few miles, so to- 
morrow let’s go down stream.” 

They had not gone more than five miles the 
next morning when their attention was attracted 
by a huge fire a couple of hundred feet back of 
the north bank and they drove up to see what 
was going on. 

‘‘Bet it’s the Yeehats barbecuin’ a caribou,” 
suggested Bill who was dying by inches for the 
want of a caribou steak. 

“Look again,” said Jack, and then Bill saw 
the winter diggings of some miners, three all 
told, one white man and two Indians, busy with 
picks and shovels. 

“Lookin’ for our gold,” was Bill’s idea of it. 

“More likely they are mining for some on 
their own account. A great deal of placer min- 
ing is done up here in the winter — ^has to be 
done in winter as a matter of fact — ^because 
the ground is so low and wet that they can’t 
do any digging in the summer time, for the hole 


144 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

fills up with water as fast as the dirt is thrown 
out. 

‘‘The way they work it according to what 
Rip Stoneback told me, is like this. The miner 
cuts all the fire-wood he can in the summer, 
which isn T a great deal as it is so scarce in these 
parts, and builds his sluice-hox; then when 
winter sets in and it begins to freeze, he clears 
the moss off of a small patch. On this clearing 
he builds a fire and keeps it going until the 
ground is thawed down a foot or so when he 
digs it out; then he builds another fire, digs 
out the thawed ground and repeats the oper- 
ation until he has sunk a shaft through the 
muck and gravel to bed-rock. 

“Now between the gravel and bed-rock is 
a layer of gold-bearing dirt called pay-streak 
and this is hoisted to the surface by means of 
a windlass on the ends of whose rope are spliced 
a couple of buckets ; and this windlass, of course, 
sets over the shaft. Usually two men go down 
in the shaft and pick the frozen pay streak 
from the ground. The shafts vary in depth 
from fifteen to forty feet depending on what 
part of the country the mine is located. 

“The third man stays on top to draw up the 


ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE 145 

buckets and with a wheel-barrow wheels the 
gold-bearing dirt back and dumps it in a pile 
where it will be in no danger of getting washed 
away by the melting snows when spring comes. 
In the spring when water is plentiful the fun 
begins for then the clean-up takes place and the 
men who were as poor as Indian dogs all winter 
wax rich and take their winnings back to civ- 
ilization where they can be separated from it. 

^‘The clean-up means that the color-bearing 
dirt is shoveled into the sluice-box, that is, a 
trough without ends, into which the miner has 
contrived to keep a steady stream of water 
running. The water washes away the dirt and 
leaves the free gold just as it does in the more 
primitive method of panning.’’ 

The miners were as glad to see the boys as 
the latter were to see them, yes even more so. 
They immediately knocked off all work and there 
was a regular ^‘chin-fest,” as Bill called it, from 
that time on. They made the boys stay to sup- 
per and improvised bunks in their cabin for 
them to sleep on. After Art Jennings, who, as 
you will gather from his name, was the lone 
white man, had heard the news of the outside 
world they talked about three other things onl}^ 


146 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

tlie first of which was gold, the second gold and 
the third gold. 

“This placer minin^ is altogether too slow a 
game for me,’^ remarked Bill when they were 
on their way again. “What I wants is to see 
moosehide sacks of it piled up like cordwood, 
I do.^^ 

“Well there are moosehide sacks of it cached 
right here in Yeehatville on the Circle. From 
the Pacific Ocean on up to the Arctic Ocean 
there’s gold. In every stream and river, as 
well as the land between them, this precious 
metal is found in either particles or in nuggets. 
Take the Klondike! it’s not much larger than 
the Rat River here and yet so much gold was 
found there its name became known all over the 
world. Every river in Alaska and the Yukon, I 
suppose, is just as rich but you don’t hear much 
about them because the Klondike was the first 
and so outshone all the rest. We’ll get ours yet, 
don’t worry,” said Jack hopefully. 

Each trip the boys made from their base of 
supplies took them from one to two weeks. 
Their marches in and out were usually made in 
a couple of days and when they had worked 
away from their permanent base as far as they 


ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE 147 

wanted to go they would set up a temporary 
camp. 

If the weather was not too severe, that is to 
say below zero, they pitched their tent, but when 
it got to twenty, forty or sixty below, or a 
blizzard struck them as it frequently did in mid- 
winter, they made a better camp by cutting out 
blocks of snow and piling them up into a dome- 
shaped shelter like the igloo of the Eskimo, but 
which Bill, who always persisted in nick-nam- 
ing everything that was new to him, called a 
hutter-disK 

Building a snow igloo was a simple matter 
after they had put up a couple, and the hoys 
got it down to such a fine point that they could 
do the complete job in two or three hours. Of 
course this was largely the result of Jack^s ex- 
perience in the Arctic which enabled him to go 
about it in the right way. He had brought his 
saw-knife with him for this express purpose. 
This useful tool is about eighteen inches long 
and one and three-fourths inches wide and while 
one of the edges of it is sharp like a knife the 
other edge has teeth cut in it like a saw. 

With this saw-knife Jack or Bill would saw 
out the hard frozen snow into blocks which for 


148 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


the lower layers of the igloo measured about 
two feet in length and eighteen inches wide 
and high; as the upper layers were reached 
they used smaller and smaller blocks. Finally 
when all of the snow-blocks but one were laid 
up and the igloo was as hemispherical as the 
half of a ball, the last block, which they beveled 
on four sides, was set in the center and this 
lield all of the other blocks out like the keystone 
of a bridge. 

They made these snow igloos about six feet 
in diameter on the inside of the base so that 
they could lie down comfortably. To get into 
the igloo they left one of the snow blocks of the 
first layer out and through this hole they also 
took in the grub they needed, the alcohol stoves 
and the sleeping bags. To close the hole it 
was only necessary to push in the snow block 
when they were pretty well housed in. 

What, then, with their fur clothing, a log j 
house at their permanent base and these snow* j 
igloos at the ends of their trips, they were able i 
to keep quite comfortable. Nearly every one 1 
who has never put in a winter in the Arctic, or 
sub-Arctic, regions seems to think that the ex- 
treme cold is a thing to be feared, but it isn’t i 


ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE 


149 


if one has the right kind of clothes, enough food 
and if, when outside of the shelter, he does not 
stop but keeps right on going or working. But 
the long hours of darkness often get to be 
mighty monotonous. 

Being boys, however, nothing could chill their 
ardor or cast a gloom on their spirits for any 
length of time and they were always ready for 
a frolic. Thus it was when they were sledding 
on streams where the ice was good they had 
some great races. Each contended that his 
team was the swiftest that ever pulled a sled 
and this difference of opinion invariably led 
to a challenge to prove it. 

The dogs entered into the spirit of the races 
with as much zest as their young masters and 
when they were abreast and the signal to go was 
given, the whips cracked and the dogs jumped 
to get first place. Onward they dashed with 
an ease and grace that made them seem more 
like rubber balls bouncing along low on the 
course, than four-footed animals whose business 
it was to work. 

But the spirit of sport was strangely strong 
in these living, vibrant creatures and as they 
fairly flew along over the course they voiced 


150 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

their joy by short howls and yelps when they 
were in the lead or their anguish by whines 
and cries when they dropped behind. 

Jack was, perhaps, a better driver than Bill 
but in his own heart he gave the credit to his 
team when they w(on and win they nearly always 
did. Bill was a good ^ ‘ sport ^ ’ though and never 
got ‘‘sore^’ when he lost a race; he always took 
the blame on himself for his poor driving and 
nothing could shake his belief that his was the 
fastest team, bar none, in all Alaska. 

There were a few times though when Bill’s 
team won. One of these rare occasions was 
when a snowshoe rabbit ran from a bank onto 
the ice intending to cross to the other side ; find- 
ing himself in front of a terrible pack of running 
dogs or wolves, he knew not which, that were 
bent on catching him, instead of going on across 
to safety he ran straightaway ahead of them. 

Sate, Bill’s lead-dog, spotted him first and 
he ran as he had never run before ; the dogs of 
his team felt this super-burst of speed on his 
part and as the rabbit paced him, so he paced 
them with the highly gratifying result, to Bill, 
that his team jumped ahead of Jack’s by a 
length. The boys urged their teams on with 


ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE 151 

their ‘‘yow-yows/’ and the bells jingled joy- 
ously while the wild race was on. 

The dogs of both teams had forgotten that 
there were such things as a trace or trail, while 
the boys had lost sight of the treasure they 
were seeking and let nothing impede their mad 
flight toward destruction. At the end of a quar- 
ter of a mile BilTs team was nearly three 
lengths ahead of Jack’s and he felt the race 
well won. His dogs had lost all interest in the 
race, indeed, they did not know they were rac- 
ing for it was the rabbit they were after now. 
Then little snowshoe fooled them, for he made a 
sharp turn and ran up the bank. 

Sate likewise turned as sharp as the high 
speed he was making would allow; the team 
swerved abruptly, slipped and slid for half-a- 
dozen yards, the sled upset and everything was 
piled up in a heap. Jack’s team shot by them 
like an arrow and they ran for another quarter 
of a mile before he could stop them in their 
mad flight. When he got back he had to admit 
that Bill’s team had won the race but it cost 
them an hour’s work to make good the damage 
done. There w'as no more racing that day. 

‘‘You see. Jack, as I always told you, my 


152 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

team is faster than yourn and all it needs to 
show speed is a rabbit for a pace maker, was 
BilPs comment as he picked himself up. 

In their goings and comings they ran across 
all sorts of wild animal life from the little lem- 
mings, a mouse-like animal with short ears and 
tail, which looks hke a miniature yellow rabbit, 
to the giant moose. In between these two ex- 
tremes they saw squirrels, snowshoe rabbits, 
red and black foxes, lynxes, gray wolves and 
•caribou. They had also seen the tracks of bears, 
for the species of bear that live in the sub-Arctic 
regions does not hibernate. 

They often shot squirrel, rabbit and ptarmi- 
gan (pronounced tar^-mi-gan), a bird of the 
grouse order, and these served as dishes of great 
delicacy for the boys, as well as giving the dogs 
a welcome change from dried fish. Bill declared 
it to be the open season for bagging some big 
game and Jack agreed that they must. But it 
is hard to seek cached treasure and be big game 
hunters at the same time. 

Once while they were moving leisurely along 
after a satisfying dinner and they were talking 
about hunting the caribou, moose and bear, the 
tables were suddenly turned on them when they 


ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE 153 

became the hunted prey of wild beasts, for a 
pack of famished wolves had scented them out 
and were headed straight for them. 

Pell-mell came the lean, long-legged beasts 
with ears erect, ribs bulging out of their loose 
skins, tails drooping and starved to desperation. 
Instantly the boys halted their teams and had 
barely time enough to cut the dogs out of their 
traces before the pack was upon them. The 
dogs knew they were in for a fight to the death 
and braced themselves for it, while the boys 
drew their revolvers and stood on their sleds 
ready for the attack. 

In less than a minute the wolves were upon 
them and the fight was on. The dogs met the 
onslaught with the strength and courage the 
wolves lacked ; and in between pistol shots, each 
of which picked off a wolf, the dogs snapped in 
two the legs, and broke the necks of their sav- 
age ancestors with a crunch of their powerful 
jaws, or opened their bellies, which let their en- 
t]*ails half out, or severed the jugular veins when 
streams of blood spurted forth from the rips 
made by merciless fangs. 

But the dogs suffered too, for often three or 
even four wolves would fight a single one and 


154 jack HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

in this unequal struggle he would go down unless 
his master took a hand and evened up numbers 
by a few well-placed bullets. Nor was it easy 
for the boys to shoot the wolves, for the fight 
was so fast and furious it was well-nigh im- 
possible at times to send a piece of cold lead into 
their miserable carcasses without the danger of 
hitting their dogs. 

One of the curious things was that when a 
wolf got hold of the harness on a dog it mis- 
took it for brute substance instead of inert 
leather and it would bite it viciously and shake 
it furiously without getting the living response 
that it had the right to expect. 

When the number of wolves had been brought 
down to twice that of the dogs, they knew they 
were beaten and the moment this happened their 
courage failed them and those that were left 
with strength enough to take to their heels 
slunk quickly away. 

An examination of the dogs showed that far 
from coming out of the fight unscathed every 
one of them was in a bad way and, still more 
sad to relate, Jennie and Prince, two of the 
outside dogs of Jack’s team, had to be shot to 
put them out of their misery. As the dogs were 


ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE 


155 


so badly off and the harness cut up and chewed 
to pieces the boys had to make camp on the spot. 

They dressed the wounds of the dogs as well 
as they could and gave them half-a-can of 
pemmican apiece — a food that the dogs liked 
above all else. While the dogs laid down and 
rested and nursed their hurts, their masters 
built an igloo, for they couldn’t tell when they 
would be able to move on. While the igloo was 
going up there was nothing but kind words and 
praise for the dogs and it could be seen by the 
looks in their eyes and the expressions on their 
faces that they knew every word which was 
said to and about them, and enjoyed and appre- 
ciated it all. As Bill saw them now he was more 
thoroughly convinced than ever that these par- 
ticular dogs were endowed with human brains 
and not just common dog brains. 

‘‘I always told you my team could outrun 
yourn and you’ll have to admit they out-fought 
yourn too,” said Bill boastfully after the gloom 
had somewhat worn off. 

‘T don’t see how you make that out,” Jack 
flared up. 

‘‘Well, two of your dogs will never mush 
again pullin’ a sled after them here on earth — 


156 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

though, they may haul a little red cart with an- 
gels in it when they go tearin’ along the trails o’ 
heaven.” 

“That’s no argument at all,” returned Jack 
soberly, “and you can’t get away with it either. 
Why, I saw ’Frisco rip the throats open of one 
wolf after another when four of them were at 
him at once. Prince and Jennie went down in 
a fluke^ — ^in a fluke I tell you — and that is the 
only reason they lost out. ’ ’ 

“This is soitenly tough luck,” said Bill as 
he was going over the wounds of the dogs be- 
fore they turned in. 

“And I’m two dogs short,” moaned Jack, 
“though I’m mighty glad they were not the mal- 
amutes. ’ ’ 

“Never youse mind. Buddy. I’ll give youse 
one of mine and we ’ll still be even. ’ ’ 

“I don’t want any of your dogs, Bill, I’ll 
just drive my five dogs along until we strike 
an Indian village or some camp and then I’ll 
buy a couple of Siwashes. But I’m sure sorry 
to lose Prince and Jennie for they were a 
couple of dandy dogs to say the least. ’ ’ 

Just the same when Bill had fixed the harness 
and hitched up the dogs preparatory to making 


ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE 157 

a fresh start, Jack saw with grim pleasure that 
the teams were even and that BilLs best dog, 
next to Sate his leader, was in the traces of his 
team. 

Jack didn’t say anything about it then but 
he made up his mind that when he went ’round 
the world on a pleasure jaunt, or anywhere else. 
Bill could go with him however crude his speech 
and rough his manner. 

They limped back to their base of supplies 
and stayed there for a week until the dogs got 
into shape again. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE LAND OF THE YEEHATS 

O X the various trips they had made from 
their base of supplies on the Big Black 
River the boys had kept a sharp lookout for 
marks or signs or other visual evidence which 
might indicate in some way the location of the 
treasure they sought. Jack^s hunch was respon- 
sible for his belief that so great a store of gold 
would not, in fact could not, have been aban- 
doned without some clew which would serve as 
a key to its recovery. 

They often dug off the snow from a pile of 
dirt which they thought might cover the sacks 
of gold; as wood was frequently hard to get, 
they couldnT thaw it out and, consequently, had 
to work like ^‘niggers’’ with their picks and 
shovels to penetrate it. And to what purpose ? 
— ^usually only to find it was the dump of some 
discarded mine. But a gold seeker wots not of 
either hardship or work if his efforts give prom- 
158 


THE LAND OF THE YEEHATS 159 

ise of bringing about the desired result. And 
they hoped great hopes. 

Again they would find a cache (pronounced 
cash) but it was not of the kind that is formed 
of a hole in the ground, or a cavity under a 
pile of stones, but a box-like structure erected 
on poles set in the ground. Some of the better 
ones had notched logs which served as steps and 
these were set up at an angle on one side so that 
access to the cache could be made with greater 
ease and lesser agility. These caches were used 
by prospectors and miners who transported 
their outfits on their backs, or hauled them on 
sleds, and who had to double back on the trail 
time and time again before they got to their 
journey’s end. 

In nearly all of these caches the stores were 
of ancient vintage, a few of them dating back 
to the pioneers of ’94 or perhaps a little later, 
and those who made the caches never returned 
to claim their contents either because they found 
they could get along without them, or were killed 
or died, or grew disheartened and made their 
way back to the river towns of the Yukon. In 
only a couple of them did they find fresh stores 
and in one of these, curiously enough, there was 


i6o JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


a pohe^ of gold nuggets. Its owner, in all 
probability, had laid it down when he was stock- 
ing the cache and forgot to take it with him 
when he went. 

Neither did the boys take it, nor disturb the 
stores in any of the caches they found, for it 
is an unwritten law in the barren north that no 
man shall touch anything cached which belongs 
to another. 

On the fifth trip out they drove east, or more 
accurately east by south, crossed the Inter- 
national boundary line and headed straight for 
Mount Burgess forty miles away. As Jack had 
said, they cared not whether they found the gold 
in Alaska, in the Yukon Territory or on top of 
the North Pole, as long as they found it. After 
they had covered about thirty miles they ran 
into a scrub forest and the first thing Jack 
spied was a pair of moose antlers lashed to 
a tree. 

Both he and Bill thought this a very strange 
circumstance but they presently concluded that 
it had been put there by some hunter though 
for what purpose they could not guess. After 
going half-a-mile farther into the woods they 

poke is a email bag usually of deerskin. 


THE LAND OF THE YEEHATS i6i 


came to another pair of moose antlers likewise 
lashed to a tree; tliis interested them in dead 
earnest and they began to investigate accord- 
ngly. Ordinarily when a trail is blazed through 
the woods a bit of the bark of the trees is 
chipped ohP at short intervals so that those who 
go or come cannot go astray but must find their 
way there and back, let come whatever may. 

But here was a trail blazed differently from 
any they had ever seen or heard of, in that 
at considerable distances apart the antlers of 
a moose lashed to a tree pointed the way, but 
what that way led to neither J ack nor Bill had 
the remotest idea. Sometimes the antlers were 
so far apart, or led off at such angles, that they 
had to hunt for an hour or more for the next 
one. 

‘‘What, I^m askin^ you as man to man, does 
it mean? Are we gettin’ near it?’^ questioned 
Bill, blinking his blue eyes. 

“I don’t know,” replied Jack soberly, though 
hoping against hope that it was the sign they 
sought; “but it is queer, isn’t it?” 

“Let’s keep right on,” was Bill’s solemn ad- 
vice. 

“Mush on there, you huskies!” yelled Jack; 


i 62 jack HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


‘^double rations of fish for yon if we find it/’ 

‘‘Ten rations of fish, three times a day fer 
life if we finds it, says I,” came from Bill. 

It is not knoAvn positively whether Sate conld 
count up to ten or not but he gave Bill an awful 
look which in husky language meant “cut 
out that loose talk and maybe each of us will 
get a piece of fish for supper anyway,” and 
with that he and his mates mushed on as fast 
as their masters could pick out the trail. 

They kept this up the best part of the day 
when their quest ended at a log cabin not un- 
like their own, and over whose door was the 
largest pair of bull-moose antlers the boys had 
ever seen. The boys, who had been building 
high their hopes on something far less tangible 
than a clew, were disappointed to the quick but 
they had the right kind of stuff in them and so 
never batted an eye. 

They were greeted by the barking and howl- 
ing of many dogs and what with the noise their 
own teams made it sounded as if pandemonium 
had broken loose. Then Joseph Cook, hunter, 
trapper, Indian Agent and sometime gold 
seeker, otherwise familiarly known as Bull 
Moose Joe, for he had brought do\vn more 


THE LAND OF THE YEEHATS 163 

moose than any other living man, appeared at 
the door and gave them a warm welcome. 

‘^But why all the antlers lashed to the trees 
Jack queried after they had established com- 
rade-like relations. 

‘T have blazed the trail to my cabin with 
antlers so that he who chances this way with liis 
eyes open can find me. ’ ^ 

Bull Moose Joe was a man who stood six foot 
in his moccasins, was of medium build and as 
straight as an Indian. He looked as if he might 
have stepped out of the great West in the days 
of the fifties for he wore his hair long, had a 
mustache and a goatee. As usual with white 
men up there he must needs have the news from 
down under, no matter how stale it was, and 
then, also as usual, the conversation just natu- 
rally drifted over to the channel of gold. It was 
then that Bull Moose Joe gave the boys the 
greatest jolt they had had in all their varied 
but brief career in the gold-fields. 

take it you boys are looking for the same 
thing I came up to look for ten years ago,’’ he 
said in an otf-hand way. 

‘‘Yes, it’s gold we’re after,” replied Jack. 

“Gold in moosehide sacks piled up like cord- 


i 64 jack HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

'W’ood!^^ lie added, watching the effect of his 
words on the boys. 

And the effect was truly electrical for their 
faces became rigid, their eyes glassed over and 
they felt the very blood in their arteries con- 
geal into water-ice. 

‘‘And — and — did you find itT’ asked Jack 
when he had recovered his powers of speech a 
little. 

“Yes, that’s what we want to know,” Bill 
gurgled as if his gullet was choked up. 

Bull Moose Joe pulled a couple of times on 
his pipe, watched the hot smoke ascend and dis- 
solve away just as had his dreams of gold. He 
laughed softly. He was in no hurry to answer 
but to the boys the moments seemed like an age. 

“No,” he said finally, “I never found it 
though I searched diligently for it winter and 
summer for the first five years I was here. I 
speak the Hupa tongue which is the tongue of 
the Athapascans and I learned to talk it so that 
I could find out what the Indians knew about it. 

“There was once a tribe of Indians, who 
lived hereabouts and they were different from 
any of the Indians that are living in the Yukon 
or Alaska to-day, for they were as fierce and 


THE LAND OF THE YEEHATS 165 

bloodthirsty as the Apaches down under. 
Among our natives here there is a legend about 
a pocket of gold that was found by these 
Indians long before the gold seekers came on 
to it. 

‘‘Then hunters and trappers from the Hudson 
Bay Company pushed their way across the 
desolate wastes of upper Canada and coming 
upon this tribe they killed them and took the 
gold from them. Before they could get the 
metal out of the country they were attacked by 
the Yeehats, another band of Indians, and, in 
turn, lost their lives. These latter Indians 
cached the gold in a pile of stones but how long 
it remained there it is hard to say for the 
Indians now living seem not to know. 

“Many years after, when men swarmed over 
Chilcoot Pass and White Pass like so many 
black flies, floated down the Yukon Eiver and 
on to the Klondike, a miner named J ohn Thorn- 
ton and a couple of pards, left the others 
and pushed farther north. And then, like the 
fools for luck they were, they discovered the 
cache and in it the pile of nuggets that is 
worth millions. 

“How to get it over to the Yukon Eiver and 


i66 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


down under in safety were their only worries 
but they were big ones. They were rich beyond 
the dreams of the wildest stampeder and so to 
lessen the chances of loss by any means they 
took their time and laid the most painstaldng 
plans. 

‘‘First they hunted the moose and made sacks 
of the hides; into these they packed the gold 
nuggets fifty pounds to the sack, and there were 
five hundred sacks which were worth millions. 
No sooner had they started than the Yeehats 
swooped down on them and although Thornton 
and his men put up a desperate fight they fell 
before the larger number of Indians and the 
moosehide sacks of gold stayed right where 
they found them. 

“In a few years the Yeehats as a tribe were 
practically exterminated by starvation and dis- 
ease and so the gold is still here, but exactly 
where, no one knows. But sometime it will be 
found again and if those who strike it are luck- 
ier than the others they will get it out ; but that 
time has not yet come. To keep me going I be- 
gan to trap and hunt and a year or so ago the 
Minister of the Interior made me Indian Agent 
for this part of the Yukon. 



“ ‘THESE INDIANS CACHED THE COLD IN A PILE OF STONES.’ ” 

— Page 164 



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THE LAND OF THE YEEHATS 167 

‘‘How did yon come to take up moose-hunt- 
ing?^’ Jack asked him. 

“I calculated that when I found the gold I 
wouldn’t want to wait until I killed the moose 
needed to make the new sacks I should need, so 
I began to hunt them long ago and there they 
are, ’ ’ and he pointed to a pile of finished sacks 
over in the corner. “You see I took time by 
the forelock. 

“There’s only one other man up here that 
has any kind of a reputation as a moose-hunter 
other than myself and that’s Moosehide Mike 
who lives somewhere over in the Klondike Eiver 
district. I met him a few years ago at a pot- 
latch but as soon as we found out that each was 
looking for the same pot of gold we didn’t hit 
it up very well together. ’ ’ 

When the boys left Bull Moose Joe’s cabin 
they were on pins and needles, for their 
thoughts were of the most conflicting nature. 
Their belief that the gold was there was now 
for the first time fixed to a certainty; on the 
other hand what ghost of a chance had they 
of finding it when an old timer like Bull Moose 
Joe who had lived there for years and covered 


i68 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


the ground in winter and summer had not un- 
earthed it? 

“We won’t be quitters anyway,” announced 
Jack, “we’ll keep right on as per schedule.” 

“You said it,” affirmed his partner. 

As they had met with quite a few Indians 
during their sojourn at Circle and had since run 
into several Indian villages, the boys had ac- 
quired a fair vocabulary of the Chinook jargon; 
which is a simple universal language formed of 
a lot of heterogeneous words which ever}^ 
Indian and white man understands and by which 
they are able to hold intelligible though limited 
conversation. 

.^For instance, in the Chinook jargon the word 
English is called Boston; to go toward the shore 
is called Friday; a big lot of anything is ex- 
pressed by saying hi-ya; a vile native alcoholic 
drink is known as hootchenoo^ and from this 
latter word comes the word hootch which is 
used by the frontiersmen everywhere. Do you 
understand, or you do understand, is kum-tux-, 
anything to eat is muck-a-muck; a strong per- 
son or animal is skookum; a friend, tillacum, 
and so on. 

With a vocabulary of a couple of dozen words 


THE LAND OF THE YEEHATS 169 

of Chinook the boys were able to get along fairly 
w^ell with any of the Indian tribes they happened 
to meet. In all of the Indian villages they came 
to everything was qniet and peaceful excepting 
the fiendish howling and barking of the half- 
starved dogs. There was nothing to indicate 
the cruelty and ferociousness that marked the 
Yeehats and the Indians who lived in these 
parts before them. 

Jack and Bill easily made friends with the 
Indians they came in contact with for they 
bought dried fish of them for their teams, gave 
them a few provisions where the need was great 
and Jack always carried his medicine case and 
treated the sick for such ailments as were not 
beyond his poor ability. These latter he had to 
leave for the medicine man, or Shamen, as he 
is called, to kill or cure. 

One afternoon as they neared an Indian vil- 
lage of considerable size near the head waters 
of the Tatonduk Eiver they met with whole 
families of Indians and on scraping up an ac- 
quaintance with some of them the boys gathered 
the information that they were going to a pot- 
latch. 

Now about all that the Indians of this region 


170 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

of Alaska do, outside of trapping and hunting, 
is to eat, drink and be merry, provided of course, 
they have the food and hootchenoo to do it with, 
for lacking these integers the resultant product, 
that is, unalloyed joy, could not be had. Among 
the Indians who were going to the potlatch was 
a half-breed hoy who spoke English a little 
having learned it from Bull Moose Joe and 
other white hunters and trappers, and Jack 
promptly annexed him with the gift of a knife. 

When Jack asked the lad his name he said 
that the white men called him Kloshshy, but 
that his right name was Montegnard, Now 
Klosh in Chinook means good but where the sky 
came from was not so easy to guess, unless he 
was nicknamed by some one of Semitic per- 
suasion. 

Kloshsky told the boys that the potlatch was 
a hi-yu feast with hyas fun, and that it was 
going to be given by a big man of the Yikyak 
tribe who wanted to be chief. The word pot- 
latch, he explained, really means gift and that 
after much feasting, drinking, dancing and 
wrestling the man-who-would-be-chief and 
whose name was Montegnais, would give away 
everything he owned to his guests. 


THE LAND OF THE YEEHATS 171 

Let’s declare ourselves in on this potlatch 
thing,” said Bill. 

“ Not a bad idea at all, ’ ’ admitted J ack. And 
so they followed the crowd. 

Friends and relatives of the man-who-would- 
be-chief came from miles and miles around and 
the journey finally ended at an Indian village 
in the center of which was a big log house nearly 
as large as that of the Grand Palace Hotel back 
at Circle. Into it the visitors made their way 
and Jack and Bill went with them. 

Talk about the decorations for a Halloween 
party! why, boy, nothing a white mind ever 
conceived of could begin to come up to the em- 
bellishments of this great hall. In the middle 
there was a wonderful bird that reached from 
the floor to the ceiling, nearly, and the like of 
which nature had never made in all her seven 
million years of experience. From the ceiling 
there hung curiously shapen birds, beasts and 
human beings that for fearsomeness outdid any- 
thing the boys had ever seen. As Bill said, ‘4t 
was enough to scare a fellow half-to-death. ” 

On poles, which were arranged in a circle 
around the giant bird, the finest blankets, the 
costliest furs and other articles prized by the 


172 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

Indians were displayed and these, Kloshsky 
told the boys, were the presents which the man- 
who-wonld-he-chief was to give away. 

When all had assembled the potlatch came 
to order. The big man was gorgeously dressed 
in ceremonial clothes and carried a long wand. 
Around him gathered his lieutenants (they 
would he so called down under) and they were 
also outfitted in ceremonial clothes. 

Then came the orchestra wliicli consisted of 
half-a-dozen men with their tom-toms. Finally 
followed the guests who moved about talking 
among themselves like society folks at a church 
fair. From the man-who-would-be-chief on 
down to the poorest Indian, all wore the richest 
kind of furs, some of them made of the silver 
fox, and they were ornamented with various 
decorations and natural jewelry. Many of the 
men and women wore necklaces and belts 
formed of gold nuggets as large as hickory nuts 
and these at once caught the eyes of the boys. 
Lo ! the poor Indian ! 

Of all those present there were only two 
poorly dressed ones and these were a couple 
of rank outsiders who had come from down 


THE LAND OF THE YEEHATS 173 

under and now saw for the first time what In- 
dian high-life really meant. Jack and Bill felt 
like a couple of hobos who had tumbled out of 
a box-car and landed in the midst of a fancy 
dress hall in progress on Fifth Avenue. 

When all were assembled the man-who-would- 
be-chief opened the potlatch with a recital of 
the wonderful deeds his ancestors had done, 
that his family had done, and especially those 
that he had done. 

‘Tt’s the same old stuff the politician who 
wants to be mayor, or governor, or president 
pulls in the States,’’ Bill pointed out. 

Then the players began to beat their tom-toms 
and when the rhythm of this bombastic music 
had stirred the souls of the guests to their very 
depths, it got them going and they danced for 
all they were worth. Most of them carried 
huge wooden masks that were a nightmare to 
look at. Different from our dances their move- 
ments were not regulated by art but by the 
simple history of their lives and of those of their 
ancestors ; in other words they were folk- 
dances. 

‘ T could do that dance as good as any of them 


174 jack HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

if I only had a false-face,’^ spoke up Bill, who 
could see nothing whatever in the energetic but 
solemn performance. 

^ ^ What do you want a f alse-f ace for 1 What ^s 
the matter with the one you have onT’ said 
Jack, laughing heartily. 

‘T knew it was purtty bad but I didn’t know 
it was as bad as all that,” retorted his partner. 

The dance over, the man-who-would-be-chief 
began to talk to the spirits of his ancestors. 
Getting no immediate response he called upon 
his guests to wake them up that they might hear 
what he had to say to them. He started them 
off with a large assortment of terrifying yells 
and this was augmented by cries, shrieks and 
screams of the others until it sounded like a 
band of renegade savages rushing to the first 
onslaught of battle. 

Bill wasn’t the least bit afraid of anything 
happening, because Jack had told him all of the 
people in Alaska and the Yukon country, what- 
ever the color of their exteriors might be, were 
ivhite at heart. But his excess of caution just 
naturally led him to fold his arms so that his 
hand wouldn’t be more than half-a-second away 
from his six-gun should he need it. 


THE LAND OF THE YEEHATS 175 


The yelling kept up at a pitch so that a white 
man could not have heard himself think and it 
lasted for fifteen or twenty minutes. Neither 
Jack nor Bill took very much stock in what they 
w^ere yelling for but (it is sad to relate and hard 
to believe) the primitive instinct in these boys 
overpowered the civilizing influences to which 
they had been subjected and time and again 
they both let loose the awful and heartrending 
yi-yi, yi-yi, 'of the cowboy. 

^‘Oh, Harlem flat, where is thy sting! said 
Jack when the yelling was over. 

‘‘You’d think they was a lot o’ cliff-dwellers 
in Noo York tollin’ the janitor in soothin’ tones 
down the dumb-waiter to put on a little more 
coal,” commented Bill. 

Then came the wrestling matches between 
those who had been enemies and, without re- 
gard to which one won, when the bout was over 
they were good friends again. 

“I could throw the two o’ them with me right 
hand tied back o’ me, see!” Bill sneered with 
evident disgust. ‘ ‘ Let ’s you and me show these 
Injuns what a real wrestling bout is, what say. 
Jack!” 

“Don’t get peeved. Bill. This is their game. 


176 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

If you saw a bout in the New York Athletic 
Club, or back of the gas-house, you wouldn’t 
want to jump in and show the onlookers how 
it ought to be done, would you? Just remember 
that we are only innocent bystanders.” 

Next came the big feast and although there 
were caribou and rabbit, geese and ptarmigan, 
still that old standby without which no Indian 
feast would be complete had the place of honor. 

There was a team of ten roast dogs all hitched 
up and going to fill the great void in the prin- 
cipal organ of digestion which existed under 
the belt of each redskin. They were hot-dogs in 
very truth. 

‘T think I’d better go an’ find out if all our 
dogs says ‘here’ when I calls the roll,” said 
Bill, and not withstanding Jack’s assurances 
that these edible dogs were not their sled dogs. 
Bill went out and counted up the members of 
their teams just the same. 

After every one had gorged himself, or her- 
self, the man-who-would-be-chief began to dis- 
tribute the presents. One of his lieutenants 
would call out a name, another would hold the 
gift before the person who auswered to it, 
Montegnais would strike the floor with his wand 


THE LAND OF THE YEEHATS 177 

indicating his pleasure and the gift would be 
made. 

The hoys came last and the man-who-would- 
he-chief ashed them their names. Kloshsky 
interpreted his wishes to the boys and through 
the linguistic ability of this half-breed lad they 
made known that they answered to the cog- 
nomens of Jack and Bill, the latter from ‘‘Noo^^ 
York. Then it was they knew the man-who- 
would-be-chief for a gentleman, even if he was 
a red-skin, for he gave them each a most won- 
derful blanket. 

When he had given away all of his posses- 
sions the potlatch was over; it was then very 
near morning but as the boys were tired they 
stayed over at the village until the following 
day. 

‘‘Old hatchet face can have my vote, any- 
time,^’ proclaimed Bill, as he admired his 
trophy. 

“You Ye a nice American, you are,’’ said 
Jack; “selling your vote for a blanket, eh!” 

“There’s a big difference,” proclaimed Bill; 
“this man-who-wants-to-be-chief is a heathen 
savage politician while down in the States the 
politicians are civilized Christians. An’ be- 


178 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


sides theyVe got jails down there. Get 

Just as they were ready to start back Klosh- 
sky, the half-breed boy, told them it is the 
custom to return all gifts to the man-who-would- 
b e-chief within a month and that they must 
bring his blankets back by the next moon. 

Jack and Bill reluctantly handed over their 
presents to Kloshsky and told him to give them 
back to the man-who-would-be-chief with their 
best wishes and kindest personal regards and 
other nice felicitations that are usually found 
on the ends: of business letters. 

‘‘Mush, you husldes!’’^ yelled Jack and Bill 
simultaneously while the Indians, less cheerful 
than on the night of the potlatch, waved them 
their adieus. 

“Indian giver, said Jack when they were 
beyond earshot. 

“I wouldn’t vote for that stingy guy now if 
he gave me all the blankets he owns,” groused 
Bill. 

But while they soon forgot the blankets they 
could not forget the necklaces and belts of nug- 
gets the Indians wore and they had more reason 
than ever to believe they were at the rainbow ’s 
end where it dipped into pots of pure gold. 


CHAPTEE X 


ON THE TRAIL OF GOLD 

ELL, how is old Potlatch this nice, 



VV bright, beautiful morning,’’ Jack joc- 
ularly inquired of his partner after they had 
started and their grouches had somewhat 
subsided. 

^‘No more o’ them things for me,” replied 
Bill almost amiably. We’ve wasted a whole 
day and we haven ’t even got a blanket between 
us to show for it. What I was thinkin’ about, 
though, was the sacks Bull Moose Joe has made 
pertainin’ to an’ anticipatin’ the findin’ of the 
gold. My one best bet is that we gets the gold 
first off and the sacks arterward.” 

‘ ‘ Now you ’re talking sense, Bill.. It just goes 
to show how all-fired over confident a fellow can 
be. Confidence is a good thing but some people 
have so much of it they fool themselves. Of 
course I’ll admit that it would take a long time 
to kill enough moose to make twenty or thirty 
sacks but a few months more or less wouldn’t 


179 


i8o JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


make much diiference after we We got the metal. 
Of course if we accidentally stumbled onto a 
moose-yard that would be different.’’ 

The boys had hunted the caribou for their 
fresh meat supplies, in fact caribou were so 
plentiful in some districts of the country 
through which they passed they seldom had 
to use their stock provisions, such as bacon and 
Alaska strawberries, and as for the dogs, they 
waxed fat on the excess of meat they were given 
and grew sluggish. There was no need for 
them to die to get to the happy hunting grounds 
— they had attained all that their canine souls 
could wish for under these youngsters of great 
hearts and high courage who were their masters. 

It is no trick at all to shoot a oaribou and it 
is no sport either for if it is wounded it will 
not put up a fight. Sport in hunting big game 
comes in only when the hunter is exposed to 
danger and takes a chance of fighting for his 
life along with the beast he is trying to kill. 
And Bill was right when he said that any man 
who calls himself a sportsman and goes after 
caribou for the mere sake of killing them ought 
to be given a spanking and sent back home 
to his mother. 


ON THE TRAIL OF GOLD i8i 


While Jaek was something of a naturalist and 
knew all about caribou and their habits Bill 
was the expert when it came to dressing them. 
Bill shot the first caribou and when he brought 
it into camp he examined it closely for it was 
the first one he had ever seen at close range. 

‘Tt looks like a reindeer to me, pard,^^ he 
said after eyeing it closely. 

^Tt is a reindeer, for caribou and reindeer are 
one and the same animal ; the only difference is 
that reindeer are domesticated and caribou are 
wild. Then again there are two kinds of cari- 
bou ; the one you Ve brought in is the kind that 
lives north of sixty-four and this is called 
barren ground caribou, while the kind that lives 
farther south is called woodland caribou. 

‘‘You see the winter coat of this caribou is 
thick and almost white, but in summer it takes 
on a reddish-brown color except underneath and 
that stays white. As summer comes on the 
caribou goes north and in winter he comes down 
here to the woodlands. While he is quite shy 
yet his curiosity is so great it often gets the 
best of him and he will stand and give a fellow 
the once over until it is sometimes too late for 
him to retreat. 


i 82 jack HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


“As to speed, why he can beat a dog or a 
horse all hollow and so when he is running 
nothing but a target shot will bring him down. ’ ’ 

“We must get some moose afore we start 
back for little ole ISToo York. I want to take 
back the head and antlers of a big un to me 
goil, see,” reflected Bill, who was evidently 
beginning to think of home. 

Jack allowed that it might not be a bad 
scheme to bring down a moose or two, not 
merely for trophies of their prowess as big 
game hunters, but for the purpose of using 
their flesh for food, as well as their hides, in the 
possible event of their having need for them. 
Now, know you, that while in summer the moose 
usually travels alone, in winter a number of 
them will band together and trample down the 
snow in a space with their hoofs, and this is 
called a moose-yard. 

Finally, one day, the boys came across tracks 
leading to a moose-yard, then quickly made a 
temporary camp, and struck out to stalk it. 
They came upon it just as the moose, of which 
there were about a dozen, had reached a small 
lake. In the yard were two old bull moose, 
half-a-dozen cows and the rest calves. The 


ON THE TRAIL OF GOLD 183 


boys crept up on them until they were within 
bullet range. The bull moose were magnificent 
specimens of wild animal life and must have 
weighed more than a thousand pounds apiece. 

The boys chose their quarry and then two 
bullets speeded forth though the cracks of their 
Winchesters sounded like a single shot. They 
ran toward the moose but the bullets which had 
crashed into their great bodies did not kill them 
or even drop them to the ground. Instead, the 
wounded beasts bellowed with rage and as the 
boys came up they charged them with mighty 
fury, their great antlers cutting the air like 
so many sabers. 

As fast as they were able to get out of the 
way of one of the bulls, the other was upon them 
and they were kept busy dodging, side-stepping 
and in devious other ways eluding them. In 
the skirmish between the boys and the bulls, 
the cows and the calves stood off at some little 
distance looking on but without the slightest 
show of any intention of joining in, for their 
belief in the power of the bulls to look after 
themselves was absolute. 

Just as the larger of the bulls was making 
a final desperate charge on Jack, he pulled the 


i 84 jack HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

trigger of liis rifle three times with lightning- 
like rapidity; the monster moose came to a 
dead-stop and toppled over, when a fourth bullet 
ended him and Jack had his first and only moose 
to his credit. 

In the meantime Bill was having a hard time 
of it, for the other bull pressed him so close he 
not only could not use his gun but he had to 
drop it to save himself. Bill had seen bull- 
fights in Mexico, but a toreador dodging a bull 
of the bovine species was as mere child ^s play, 
he opined, as he afterward said in telling me 
about it, when compared with getting away from 
this mighty animal of the genus Cervus, 

He had also seen, yes, had even performed, 
that seemingly superhuman feat known in the 
cattle country as bulldoging a steer, which 
means that a cowboy throws a steer to the 
ground by grasping its horns and twisting its 
neck until the animal falls, but he knew that this 
trick would not succeed with the monster he 
was now pitted against. 

The struggle was going on away from where 
it started as far as powder will send a bullet 
and the moment Jack had killed his moose he 
ran to help his partner. Before he got within 


ON THE TRAIL OF GOLD 185 

firing range he saw a sight that he would not 
be likely to forget, no, not if he lived to the 
century mark. The bull moose had made a 
terrific lunge at Bill but instead of pinning 
him on his horns, or catching and tossing him 
a dozen yards or so as is the way of these 
enraged beasts, the New York boy had grasped 
his antlers as he lowered his head land 
with the agility of an acrobat, plus the desire 
to aid and abet the first law of nature, when 
the bulPs head went up Bill went with it with 
his feet straight up in the air. 

In -another instant he turned completely over 
and landed on the moose ^s neck and there he 
gripped the coarse thatch of hair and held on 
with a tenacity of purpose that all of the bulPs 
cavorting around could not shake off. Then 
it was that Bill drew his six-gun and emptied 
the contents of it into the head of the great 
beast, while a bullet from Jack^s rifle brought 
him down. Finding their leaders were no more, 
the cows and calves turned and fled. 

The next thing on the list was to skin the 
moose, and this was a very arduous job. Both 
of the boys, but especially Bill, could almost 
out-Indian an Indian when it came to skinning 


i86 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


a caribou but out here where the icy wind was 
cutting across the lake it was a very disagree- 
able task. Before they were through with the 
work the day had slipped into night and they 
had to make their temporary camp their 
quarters. After a supper of moose-cutlet they 
felt much ‘‘sorensified’^ as Bill expressed it, 
and he was not so badly off but that he could 
play a few cliunes, as he called them, on his 
mouth organ. They piled the hides, both of 
which were as large as the largest buffalo hides, 
on their sleds, together with as much of the 
meat of the carcass of one of the moose as they 
could carry; this they took back with them to 
their permanent camp, and it solved the meat 
problem for a very considerable time to come. 

Wliile Jack could clean the skins quite as 
well as his partner, still the job didn’t agree 
with his finer sensibilities and he balked on 
doing it in true Indian style. Bill was not so 
particular and he would squat squaw-like on 
the floor, lay the skin on his lap, hair-side down, 
grip the edge of it with his teeth, and with his 
left hand under it he easily and quickly cut and 
scraped away all the flesh and fat from it with 



“BILL DREW HIS SIX-GUN AND EMPTIED IT INTO THE HEAD 

OF THE GREAT BEAST.” 


— Page 184 



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ON THE TRAIL OF GOLD 187 

his knife in the right and never once make a 
miscue and cut the skin. 

Not satisfied with their experience as big 
game hunter^, in bringing down the moose, the 
boys pined for a bear. Now while bears are 
quite plentiful in many parts of Alaska they 
seemed to be mighty scarce in the Yeehat dis- 
trict, though every once in a while the boys 
would see the tracks of one. And so it was 
that Jack and Bill left their work of seeking 
gold ever and anon and sought to track, instead, 
the bear to his lair. 

But their hunt for a bear was very like their 
hunt for gold in that they hunted both with vim 
and determination but neither the bear nor the 
gold was anywhere to be found. Yet the boys 
knew that both were there if they could only 
catchee ^em, as Sing Nook would say. When 
they came upon the fresh tracks of a bear, as 
they did once in a while in crossing lakes or go- 
ing through the woods, they forewent their 
main quest in the hopes of getting a shot at 
Bruin, but instead they never even got a look at 
one. 

But bear was not on their minds all of the 


i88 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


time. They had been busy around their per- 
manent camp for several days getting the 
moosehides into shape and bear was as remote 
from their minds as the prehistoric dinosaur. 

One evening Jack was getting supper and 
Bill had gone over to the wood-pile, which was 
a stone ^s throw from the cabin, for some fire- 
wood. After he had been gone for a quarter 
of an hour, or so. Jack began to wonder what 
had become of him, inasmuch as he was wait- 
ing for the wood to broil a moose-steak. An- 
other five minutes elapsed and Jack, who had 
become impatient, went to the door to hurry 
Bill up. 

Going to stay at that wood-pile all day,^^ 
he yelled very loud and not very gently. 

No answer from Bill, so Jack went over to 
see if anything could have happened. When 
he got close to the wood-pile he heard groans 
and when he came upon his partner he found 
enough had happened, and to spare. There was 
Bill keeled over in the snow covered with frozen 
blood while lying up as close to him as two 
mortal enemies could get was a big brown bear 
breathing his last. 

Jack lifted his partner to his shoulder and 


ON THE TRAIL OF GOLD 189 

carried him to the cabin where he gave him 
first aid and washed him up. Bill was clawed, 
chewed, tom and bmised from head to foot and 
back again. Only for his fur clothing he must 
certainly have been killed. 

After Jack had attended his partner and 
made him as comfortable as possible he went 
out to the wood-pile and took a look at the 
bear. Mr. Bmin had been slashed up quite a 
bit himself for Jack counted fifty-&: knife 
wounds in his head and body. He was assuredly 
a whopper for he must have weighed in the 
neighborhood of six hundred pounds. 

Bill lay in his bunk for two days and nights 
and when he got up he was still feeling pretty 
groggy. The first thing he did was to ask for 
his ‘‘lookin’ glass,” which was a bit of bur- 
nished steel of the kind used by dough-boys in 
the army. Bill screwed up his face and Jack 
thought he was going to cry. 

“ ’Tain’t no use, pard,” he moaned looking at 
himself. 

“No use of what, Bill,” Jack asked sym- 
pathetically. 

“No use in havin’ a goil. Look at me map 
now and tells me, as man to man, could any goil 


190 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

love a guy what^s got one like it. I says no.^^ 

‘‘A fellow’s face hasn’t anything to do with 
it. It’s the kind of a fellow he is down deep 
in his heart, and the stuff he’s made of, that 
counts, not only with his girl, but with the world 
at large,” urged Jack. 

^‘But look at it. Nobody but a mother could 
love a face like that,” proclaimed Bill, and Jack 
came very near thinking his partner had spoken 
rightly. 

‘‘Now tell me how it all happened.” 

“Well,” began Bill, putting his hand to his 
forehead, “I remember I went to the wood- 
pile and as I was pickin’ up an armful o’ wood 
I heard something back of me go woof! woof! 
I said *woof, woof yourself’ and lookin’ ’round 
I saw this here ornery bear standin’ back o’ 
me with his dooks up and ready for a fight. I 
drops the wood and lets out an orful holler for 
you to bring a gun but you musta gone to sleep 
on the stove for you didn’t show up. 

“Then this here ornery bear makes a reach 
for me jaw and me and him had a sprintin’ 
match ’round the wood-pile. Finally he catches 
up with me and lands a gentle little tap on me 
jaw with his tremenjous right hand and it sen" 


ON THE TRAIL OF GOLD 


191 


me sprawling. Afore I could get up he was 
on top 0 ’ me and I thought I was goin’ to be 
like the hero o’ that rime for little kids which 
runs : 

‘Algy met a bear; 

The bear was bulgy 

And the bulge was Algy.’ 

had left me si:5t-gun here in the cabin and 
I had just sense enough left to grabs me huntin’ 
knife when I stabbed him every chanst I got. 

We rolls over and over until after a while he 
and me couldn ’t roll over any more and then you 
comes.” 

^‘Yes, you drove that knife into him fifty-six 
times by actual count,” said Jack admiringly. 

‘‘One more stab and there ’d have been enough 
for an advertisement for a pickle factory,” re- 
plied Bill. 

“You certainly did put him out of commis- 
sion all right. It must have been a great fight. 
I tell you I’d like to have seen it,” allowed Jack 
with enthusiasm. 

Bill looked up and blinked his eyes at his 
partner. 

“Yes, it w’as a great fight all right. I’m 


192 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

sorry you missed it and I wish you could have 
seen it from the place I did. I alius did prefer 
broilin’ moose-'steaks as against killin’ a b’ar, 
and hereafter youse gets the wood. See 1 ’ ’ 

So ended their hunt for big game. 

Now if you will look at a map of Alaska you 
will see that the Porcupine River is like the 
letter U laid over on its side ; that is to say, its 
head waters are in Alaska and the stream then 
flows east over the International boundary into 
the Yukon Territory, thence north by north- 
east across the Arctic Circle and when it reaches 
latitude 137 degrees and longitude about 671/2 
degrees, it makes a sharp bend and flows back 
west by southwest for a couple of hundred 
miles, when it empties into the Yukon River, 
between the towns of Beaver and Port Yukon. 

The boys had followed Jack’s scheme of going 
out in every direction like spokes from the hub 
of a wheel, in which case, as has been previously 
explained, the hub was the base of their sup- 
plies on the Big Black River. And it •will also 
be seen by a reference to the map that this river 
is a tributary of the Porcupine River and emp- 
ties into it near Fort Yukon. In fact, Alaska 


ON THE TRAIL OF GOLD 193 

is a country of rivers and nearly all of them, 
except those along the coast, are feeders for 
the Yukon River. 

By the middle of March the boys had com- 
pleted about half of the spokes of the wheel and 
on this particular trip they had found greater 
evidences of gold in larger quantities than on 
any one they had previously made. It was 
their sixth trip, which took them due south of 
their base, and at the end of it they came to 
the head waters of the Porcupine River. Then 
they traveled down it, or perhaps it would be 
better to say up it, for in its inception it flows 
northwest. They met more miners on, and in 
the vicinity of, the Porcupine River than in all 
of the rest of their trips put together. 

Every little way they would come across 
a handful of miners who were engaged in the 
irksome but albeit pleasant task of picking out 
the pay-streak in a mine, hauling it to the sur- 
face and piling it up on the dump. At these 
camps the boys always lost a lot of time for 
they would have to stop and give, or get, the 
latest news from down under which in most in- 
stances was from three to five months old. All 
of the men they met were in the most cheerful 


194 jack HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

and sanguine frame of mind, which of itself was 
enough to show that the claims they had staked 
out were rich in the yellow metal. 

At every camp the boys received a most 
hearty welcome from these rough and hardy 
men who were wresting treasure from old 
Mother Earth here in the high, high North. 
Often they felt that they must push on but 
they simply could not withstand the temptation 
of accepting an invite to stay for dinner, supper 
or breakfast, or as long as they had a mind to, 
for the men were making their piles and under 
such auspicious circumstances they craved the 
company of their fellow kind. 

Thus it was that when the boys went into 
the rough log cabins, which were often no better 
and sometimes a great deal worse than their 
own, they saw glittering things lying around 
loose the like of which their cabin could not 
boast, and these were nuggets of gold in abun- 
dance. In one cabin they saw an old molasses 
can with the cover melted off and it was filled to 
overflowing with nuggets ; in another cabin there 
was a bucket heaped high with nuggets, while 
in still another, nuggets were piled up in the 
corner like coal. 


ON THE TRAIL OF GOLD 195 

And this treasure was only a small part, an 
incidental part, of the winnings of these men, 
for the nuggets were picked up from the pay- 
streak as it was picked out and shoveled into 
the buckets, while the gold dust which had a 
far greater worth was still out in the dumps 
waiting to be washed in the final clean-up which 
would take place in the spring. 

Bill allowed that the men in Alaska must all 
be white except for that rotter. Black Pete, for 
no one watched the gold to keep it from being 
stolen, nor would there be any need to watch it 
until they started back on their long journey 
toward civilization. The boys were at last on 
the trail of gold! 

‘‘Here in this district is gold a-plenty, Jack, 
if we want to do like the rest of ’em and work 
for it,” said Bill as a feeler, for he had begun to 
think that, after all, it might be a better paying 
deal to do a little digging on their own account 
and get a few thousand out of a place where they 
knew it was, than to keep on looking for millions 
laced up in moosehide sacks, when they hadn’t 
the faintest notipn of where it was hidden. In 
other words it was the outcropping of the old 
cabbage — adage I mean — ^which says that a ca- 


196 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


nary in the cage is worth a couple of them flying 
around the room with the windows open. 

But Jack vetoed the idea, for since they were 
on the richest claims that had yet been staked 
by mortal, it stood to reason that right in this 
district must be the great store of gold they 
were after. Again, and by the same token, 
when various miners offered them ten, fifteen, 
yes, even as high as twenty-five dollars a day 
to work for them, these generous wages made 
not the slightest appeal to the boys. If they 
had to work to get the gold out of the earth, the 
boys allowed it would be better to do a little 
prospecting the coming sununer, stake out their 
claims and then go to it the next winter. 

‘Tt^s the same old game I’m tellin’ you, 
pards,” said one of the miners to his compan- 
ions as the boys drove away after he had made 
them a particularly alluring offer to go to work. 

‘ ‘ These young scalawags are after them moose- 
hide sacks o’ gold as sure as I’m bom, and 
twenty dog-teams couldn’t pull them away from 
the crazy idee.” 

Then the three men laughed a long, loud, and 
hearty laugh which showed what they thought 
of the scheme. 


CHAPTER XI 


GOLD, GOLD, NOTHING BUT GOLD 

T he boys bad made a much longer stay on 
the end of this last trip out than they 
had figured on, for now that they were in the 
heart of the real gold fields they were reluctant 
to go back until they had explored every part 
of it. 

While gold dust and gold nuggets were to 
be found in every miner’s cabin in amounts 
ranging up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, 
still the boys were as poor as ever, for nowhere 
had they found the slightest signs of gold 
packed in moosehide sacks and corded up like 
stovewood. 

They had gone through valleys, up and down 
streams, over tundras, into forests and across 
lakes and they had combed these districts pretty 
well, but the only visible etfect of their efforts 
was the exeunt of their good grub and they 
were fast running short of their reserve rations 
for both themselves and their dogs. 

197 


198 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


Both Jack and Bill were growing discouraged 
but the difference between them was that while 
the latter never hesitated to voice his innermost 
thoughts, the former applied the brakes so that 
his never got to the surface of audible speech. 

‘^This prospectin^ business is beginning to 
clog on me phy-si-que,’’ announced Bill, as he 
was hitching up the dogs preparatory to start- 
ing back to their base. 

‘‘Suppose you’d been prospecting here for 
twenty odd years like old ‘7 Blazes^ we met 
down at Juneau, or for fifteen, ten, or five years 
like hundreds of others up here,” plugged in 
Jack. 

“That’s a hawse of an entirely different breed 
for they haven’t anything else to do, while I 
have me business, me mother and me goil to look 
after in little ole Noo York,’^ Bill replied, his 
eyes snapping with the pure joy of the thought. 

New York ! how good those two words sounded 
to Jack, for while Montclair, New Jersey, is 
where he lived, everybody north of New York 
as far as Albany, east as far as Coney Island, 
south as far as the Atlantic Ocean and west as 
far as Trenton always think of New York as 


NOTHING BUT GOLD 


199 

Ills home town when he gets a respectable 
distance away from it. 

But to get back to Earth and Alaska. The 
dwindling condition of their food supplies led 
the boys to go into close caucus as the best 
means of supporting their party, so they de- 
cided to go back to their base at once and bring 
down a larger store of provisions. 

This settled, they repacked their sleds and 
hitched up the dogs for the trip northward 
again. They started off mth whips a-crack- 
ing, bells a-jingling and the dogs in the best of 
spirits even if their masters were not in such 
good humor. 

“My only regret in leaving Alaska will be 
that we canT take all of these huskies along 
with us. I^m going to take ^Frisco and maybe 
Skookum too,’’ said Jack. 

“An’ I’m goin’ to take old Sate home,” said 
Bill, and when Sate heard this he gave two 
merry little howls for all the world as if he had 
understood and, on second thought, there’s no 
doubt but that he did. 

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could take back 
both dog teams an’ the sleds an’ drive them up 
Fifth Avenoo — ^wouldn’t it be great. Jack?” 


200 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


His partner gave him the laugh. 

There you go dreaming that same stuff 
again. It would be a great show for the New 
Yorkers who donT know how to travel except 
on trolleys, and trains and in motor cars and 
hearses. But by the time we get back it will be 
well along toward the middle of summer so 
I guess wedl have to call that little day dream 
of yours off.^^ 

Can’t youse even let a fellow dream out 
loud onct in a while % ’ ’ Bill inquired petulantly. 
‘Tt don’t cost nothin’.” 

‘‘Go on and rave then, I don’t care,” said 
Jack. 

“Well then, just imagine it was winter in Noo 
York an’ us a-drivin’ our dog teams up the 
Avenoo with moosehide sacks o’ gold piled on 
our sleds like cordwood.” 

“Why, we wouldn’t get from Thirty-third 
Street to Forty-second before there ’d be Wild 
West doings and a dozen gangs of gunmen, any 
one of which would be as bad or worse than 
Soapy Smith’s, would be holding us up and tak- 
ing our sacks of gold away from us,” Jack told 
him. 


NOTHING BUT GOLD 


201 


‘‘An’ what would the perlice be doin’ all this 
time?” asked Bill innocently. 

“Oh, they’d be directing the traffic and show- 
ing the hold-up men which way to go to keep 
from being run over by the many motor cars,” 
Jack replied with all seriousness. 

Bill blinked his eyes. 

“An’ I suppose we’d be standin’ by with our 
hands in our pockets lookin’ on. Mush, you 
huskies, mush!” yelled Bill gruffly and with 
that the conversation lagged. 

All that day they traveled leisurely along 
and when night came on they had only done 
some twenty miles. As usual the boys looked 
after the dogs’ feet and fed them a stinting por- 
tion of fish, when they at once dug into the snow 
with the openings on the south side. Jack and 
Bill had no intention of making a snow igloo for, 
like their dogs, they had grown fat upon the 
good things of the land and in consequence they 
were not as alert and spry as they had been. 

“See them huskies Jack? See the way 
they’ve crawled in on the south side? That 
means a high wind from the north to-night and I 
prognosticates a blizzard coming I hates to 


202 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


think 0^ it but I guess we’d better build a igloo,” 
was Bill’s advice. 

^‘Not so bad when you can use a dog for a 
barometer, what say Bill!” remarked his 
partner. 

‘ ‘ Sure, they’re great animules all right. You 
can use ’em for Christmas presents, a pair o’ 
suspenders or eat ’em, accordin’ to your 
needs,” added Bill to his partner’s eulogy on 
the wide range of usefulness of the husky as an 
all round convenience. 

Now the dogs of the Arctic and sub- Arctic 
regions are the greatest weather forecasters in 
the world for when they want to go to sleep they 
dig a hole out of the snow so that the opening 
will be to the leeside, that is, to the side op- 
posite that which the wind strikes when it blows 
up in the night. 

The dogs forecasted the direction the wind 
would blow that night with their usual accuracy 
and Bill’s acumen of mind in foreseeing the 
necessity of an igloo was justified, for a blizzard 
hurled itself down on them from the north, the 
thermometer dropped to seventy below, the 
\Nfind raged and tore around like mad, while the 
sleet beat down upon and around them with 


NOTHING BUT GOLD 


203 

mighty fury for four whole days and nights 
without a let-up. 

In the meantime the boys stood it, or rather 
laid down to it, uncomfortably in their igloo, 
for it was altogether too small for such a pro- 
longed stay. At that they would have gotten 
along all right but for their short rations, which, 
if the blizzard had kept up much longer, would 
have starved them to death. During all this 
time the dogs had staid in their holes without 
so much as a bite of fish to eat. 

When on the morning of the fifth day the 
boys pulled away the block of snow that closed 
the opening to their igloo they found they were 
snowed under, and after a couple of hour’s of 
hard work they succeeded in digging their way 
out through ten feet of snow*. Then they 
called their dogs who were likewise sewed up 
in the blanket of snow. One by one they dug 
their way out but they were so hungry they were 
in a mean humor. 

Since they had not had anything to eat for 
so long a time the boys generously gave them 
half of their fish rations for the time they were 
entombed, when they became something like 
their old selves again. It didn’t take the boys 


204 jack HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

long to hitch up and get started but the going 
was painfully slow and tedious, though they 
hoped for better sledding when they struck the 
tundra that lay beyond. 

All I^m asking is that we run into an Indian 
village, for as our grub-boxes now stand, well 
soon be without anything to eat,’’ said Jack half 
to himself, as they moved along. 

Funny as how this blizzard couldn’t have 
held off for a couple of days and given us a 
chanst to get back to our base,” groused Bill 
just as though the weather cared anything for 
them; ‘^but what’s that I spies down yonder in 
the valley. ’ ’ 

The boys stopped their teams so that they 
could see to better advantage and took a look 
at the object in the distance. 

‘‘Looks like the top of some miner’s cabin,” 
was Jack’s opinion. “As it is about noon let’s 
go over, invite ourselves in, eat and be mis- 
erable.” 

“Mush!” they bawled out and made for the 
cabin which was nearly a mile away. 

As they came up to it the only sign of life 
they saw was a couple of gaunt huskies that 
looked more like starved timber wolves than 


NOTHING BUT GOLD 


205 


animals of the domesticated canine breed. They 
snarled and snapped at the boys, which ill man- 
ners made the team dogs furiously mad and 
had they not been in the traces they would have 
made short work of them. Bill threw each of 
the starved dogs a piece of fish and in the hopes 
of getting more they curbed their tempers a 
bit. In the meantime Jack hallooed time and 
again outside the door but there was no re- 
sponse from the cabin. 

‘‘Whoever lives here can’t be very far away 
or his dogs wouldn’t stick around,” said Jack. 
Then he pounded vigorously on the door and 
hallooed again. 

He was about to give it up for a bad job when 
the door opened a little, but instead of a miner 
to greet him he was astonished almost out of his 
mts when he saw before him the frail, wasted 
form of a young half-breed girl. Then Bill 
stepped up and he got the shock of his life too. 

The girl, who was not more than fifteen years 
old, said never a word but stared appealingly 
at them with her big, dark hollow eyes, and then 
fell suddenly to the floor. The boys were inside 
the cabin in an instant and it was easy to guess 
that hers was a case of pure and simple star- 


2o6 jack HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


vation. Bill picked her up as though she were 
a baby and he was going to lay her on a bunk 
near by when he saw a white man stretched 
out motionless on it. Hastily laying the girl on 
another bunk he went to the man, listened to 
his heart and found that he was still alive. 

Jack had not been idle in the meantime but 
had made some tea and prepared some bouillon 
and these he gave to both the girl and the man. 
The tea acted as a stimulant, the bouillon as a 
food and together they had an almost imme- 
diate etfect on the girl, for now she opened her 
wan, lusterless eyes and looked at her benefac- 
tors. Then she feebly smiled her appreciation 
of the kindness of these two strange white boys 
whom she felt had been sent in this hour of her 
extreme need by the Great Spirit. 

Having got the girl well on the mend, both 
Jack and Bill gave their undivided attention to 
the man ; but he did not recover so rapidly for 
with him starvation was an after effect, the 
primary cause having its origin in a cancer of 
the stomach which was of several years’ stand- 
ing. But with all of Jack’s medical lore and 
Bill’s skill in making new men out of broken 
down ones; in spite of the strengthening food 


NOTHING BUT GOLD 


207 


and careful nursing, Michael Carscadden, better 
known as Moosehide Mike, steadily grew worse ;• 
for he was sorely in need of an operation. 

In the early morning hours he always seemed 
to be better and on the fifth day after the boys 
reached the cabin they believed he had a fight- 
ing chance; it was on this basis that they held 
out the hope of his recovery to the girl Eileen. 
But Michael knew his condition better than did 
the boys and that same evening, just as the red 
Arctic sun was slipping down behind the White 
Mountains, this mighty hunter of moose and of 
gold knew that he was slipping with it to his 
last rest. Death had staked out its claim on 
him. Knowing that the end was not far off he 
took Eileen in his arms and called the boys to 
his bedside. 

‘ ‘ This little girl is my daughter. Her mother 
was a full-blooded Athapascan and as good a 
woman as the great God ever put a heart in. 
A year ago she died and I did not have the 
strength to get back to civilization with my 
sacks of gold and as I would not leave without 
them Eileen and I have lived here alone these 
last twelve months. My wife was a direct 
descendant of Yakintat, a Yeehat chief. 


2o8 jack HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


‘‘The Yeehats once lived in this district and 
they had in their possession a great store of 
gold which they had taken from three white men, 
of whom a prospector named John. Thornton 
was the leader. In the fight which followed 
Thornton and his companions were killed. The 
Chief of the Yeehats cached the gold which 
Thornton and his men had packed in moosehide 
sacks and its hiding place remained a secret 
with the tribe. 

“A few years after, a plague broke out among 
the Yeehats and when that ended there was only 
a handful of them left and these joined other 
and less fierce tribes. When I reached Alaska 
I heard, like yourselves and all the others who 
came here, the story of this great treasure of 
gold and, like yourselves and many others, I set 
my heart on finding it. 

“I lived with different Indian tribes and, 
finally, when I was pretty nearly killed by a 
moose a young Indian woman nursed me back to 
life and then I married her. She told me many 
legends and folk-lore tales about the Indians 
and one of these had to do with a mighty store 
of gold, the location of which had been handed 
down to her. She thought of it as nothing more 


NOTHING BUT GOLD 


209 


than a mere story but I took it seriously and 
me and my Marie set out to find it and find it 
we did/^ 

The dying gold seeker raised himself on his 
arm a little and clutched at the collar of his 
shirt. His eyes brightened with a kind of pre- 
ternatural light as he continued: 

‘‘Yes, there we found it in a cave deep in 
the side of a hill, bright and yellow nuggets 
ranging in size from bits as large as a pea 
to chunks as large as my fist. The moosehide 
sacks that held it had long since rotted away 
and the metal had burst through them and lay 
in heaps on the ground. 

‘ ‘ Then it was I became a hunter of moose, not 
for the love of hunting, not for the meat to eat, 
but for their hides to make new sacks of. And 
I killed more moose than any other man here- 
abouts, unless it be Bull-Moose Joe who lives 
over there around Mount Burgess in the Yukon. 
The difference Twixt him and me is that he 
hunted the moose a-f ore he found the gold whilst 
I found the gold and then hunted the moose. 
My Marie and little Eileen and me made new 
sacks of the hides, packed them full of gold, 
brought them and here they be.” 


210 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


The boys looked at each other knowingly and 
shook their heads. They understood perfectly, 
or thought they did. 

^‘He’s got a high fever and is as delirious 
as they make them,’^ said Jack. 

‘‘Bats in his belfry for fair,^^ added Bill. 

“No, good friends. My poor daddy is not 
out of his head. Every word he says is truly 
so,’ ^ Eileen told them. 

The dying man smiled feebly. 

“When I am gone I want you two boys to 
take my little Eileen with you down under and 
see that she is brought up like a white lady and 
given everything that gold can buy. And I 
want you to watch over and protect her as if 
she was your own sister. Promise me you will 
do all this and I will give to each of you one> 
third of all my gold and Eileen is to have the 
other third. She will teU you where it is when I 
am gone and there I want you to bury me. ’ ’ 

He stretched out his hands unsteadily toward 
the boys and they grasped them warmly. 

“Do you promise r’ he asked almost in- 
audibly. 

“We most solemnly do,^^ answered the boys 
deep from their hearts. 


NOTHING BUT GOLD 


211 


‘ ‘ Then I shall die in peace. ^ ^ 

Her father took Eileen ^s thin, pale hand in 
his and kissed it. 

“Good-by, little daughter. I hear your 
mother calling and I must go. I thought that 
I would live to take you down under but it is 
not to be. Instead your mother and me will 
meet you in the sweet bye and bye. And may 
the great, good God above us bless you.” 

Her hand fell out of his and she threw her 
arms around his neck. 

“Good-by, dear, dear Daddy; good-by,” 
she sobbed, and then fell prostrate across the 
inert body of her father from which his spirit 
had just taken flight. 

Jack lifted her gently back to her own bunk, 
while Bill drew a blanket over the dead man^s 
face and turned away with something mighty 
like tears in his blue eyes. 

That night was the most solemn and heart- 
rending one any of these young folks had ever 
experienced, for to the young, death is ever 
gloomy. The boys built a good fire, lit half-a- 
dozen candles and did all they could to soften 
the weight of the blow which had fallen on 
Eileen, but their efforts were in vain. 


212 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


To add to the melancholy of the occasion the 
dogs, instead of crawling into their holes after 
they had eaten their half-rations of fish, sat in 
a semi-circle outside of the cabin door and in 
the ghostly light of the streaming aurora bore- 
ahs, with their noses pointed skyward, they 
spent the greater part of the night howling 
mournfully a last requiem for the departed soul. 

The next morning the boys set to work to 
fashion a casket to hold the remains of Michael 
Carscadden, and it took them the best part of 
three days to finish it. Then they put his body 
in his sleeping bag and laid it in the rough 
hewn box. 

Eileen was so weak and dazed she seemed 
hardly to realize what it was all about. As she 
lay on her bunk she only stared with wide-open, 
pathetic eyes’ at these last sad arrangements. 
It was merciful that she did not understand to 
the full. 

The boys gave her all the food they could 
scrape together and did without themselves for 
they had to get her strong enough to travel. 
Starvation was close on their heels. BilPs 
•solution for the shortage of food was that they 


NOTHING BUT GOLD 


213 

kill one of the sled-dogs but Jack would not 
listen to such a thing. 

‘H'm no cannibal Bill, and I’d as leave eat 
my grandmother as I would one of our dogs,” 
was the way he disposed of this brash idea of 
his partner. 

Jack figured that they could last just three 
days longer and by the end of that time they 
would have to be back at their base of supplies, 
or they would .never get there. 

‘‘We must leave your father now, Eileen, and 
will you tell us where it is he wished to sleep 
his last sleep?” Jack was finally forced to ask 
her. 

He had waited as long as he could for he 
greatly feared that in her weakened condition 
she might not survive this last sad ordeal. But 
in Eileen ’s veins flowed the blood of Irish stoics 
and Indian chiefs and she accepted the inevi- 
table with great courage and fortitude. 

“Under the floor,” she replied as bravely as 
she could. 

“He chose well,” Bill whispered, “for here 
the wolves can’t get him.” 

‘ ‘ The cabin will be the tomb of a true Alaskan 


214 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


gold seeker here in the heart of the wild north- 
land,^^ said Jack reverently. 

The boys commenced to tear up the heavy 
timbers that formed the floor of the cabin and 
when they had a couple of them up what they 
saw underneath almost caused their senses to 
leave them, for there in a big pit lay sack upon 
sack made of moosehide piled up like cordwood! 

Bill lowered himself into the pit and lifted 
out the sacks to Jack who piled them up against 
the wall. The rawhide thongs had come loose 
from some of them and the shining yellow metal 
poured out in a golden stream about the floor. 

When hardships and starvation overtook the 
boys they knew them for stern realities but 
having stumbled upon the great store of gold in 
this wholly unexpected manner and under such 
surprising conditions they didn T know whether 
it was truly so or merely a wild and woolly 
dream. They really didn’t. To them it was 
all too wonderful for any human explanation. 

While they were hard at work getting up the 
sacks, the gold seeker who slept on yonder bunk 
and the half-breed girl who lay weak and help- 
less on the other bunk were well nigh forgotten 
for they were the masters of gold that made 



‘GOLD: GOLD! NOTHING IIUT GOLD!!!’ 


—Page 213 


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NOTHING BUT GOLD 


215 

them as rich as the ancient Croesus or the 
modem Rockefeller. 

‘‘Gold! gold!! Nothing but gold!!! I tell 
you Bill,’’ ejaculated Jack in the wild frenzy 
of the gold seeker who has made his strike. 

“Yes, old pard, and we’ve got it in our 
clutches where it won’t get away,” returned 
Bill, just as excitedly. “Jack I’ve got to take 
my hat often to you for bein’ the only, original 
man with the hunch that always makes good.” 


CHAPTER XII 

BACK TO THE HAUNTS OF MEN 

A fter the boys had taken the sacks of 
gold out of the pit they lowered the rude 
box that held all that was mortal of Michael 
Carscadden into it; stood with Eileen by the 
open grave with bowed heads and made their 
silent prayers for him. Then Bill played 
Nearer My God To Thee on his mouth-organ 
and never before had he played the toy musical 
instrument so sweetly and with such feeling. 

This done the boys filled in the space around 
and above the box with snow which they packed 
down tight; then they came to rigid attention, 
gave the military salute and Bill sounded taps 
on his mouth-organ when the simple but sincere 
service was over. So ended the life of adven- 
ture and romance of one of Alaska’s greatest 
hunters of moose and seekers of gold — ^Michael 
Carscadden. 

After the boys had put back the heavy hewn 
216 


BACK TO THE HAUNTS OF MEN 217 

timbers, which formed the floor, they fell to dis- 
cussing the best way to get Eileen and the gold 
over to their permanent camp, for it was about 
as hard a puzzle as getting the fox, the geese 
and corn across the river. 

There were three ways of doing it but as two 
of them necessitated leaving Eileen alone at 
one or the other of the cabins they did not 
think well of either of these and hence elim- 
inated them. The matter resolved itself down 
to the conclusion that the only feasible plan was 
for them all to go together and take along the 
gold at the same time. 

‘‘You can hitch up my dogs, boys,’^ spoke up 
Eileen, ‘ ‘ then you will have seven dogs in each 
team and they can haul these heavy loads. ’ ’ 

“But your dogs are nothing but skin and 
bones, Eileen,^’ Jack explained to her, and I 
doubt very much if they will be able to drag 
themselves back to our camp, let alone do any 
team-work. ’ ’ 

“Here we are millionaires in our own right 
an’ only half-a-pound of tea, a dozen biscuits 
and two cans- of pemmican left and our dogs 
a-starvin’ to death. I’ll give a hundred dollars 
for a beefsteak as big as my hand,” said Bill, 


2i8 jack HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


and he meant it, but there were no takers, for 
here in the frozen wilderness gold had lost its 
purchasing power. 

That night while Eileen slept, the boys loaded 
the heavy sacks on their sleds and on one of 
them they made a comfortable bed for her of 
bear-skins. Then Jack prepared a pot of tea, 
doled out a single biscuit and a spoonful of 
pemmican for each hand and called Eileen to 
‘^breakfast.’’ While she was getting ready for 
the long journey the boys went out and whistled 
for the dogs but they were in no great hurry 
to leave their warm holes. 

Less than half a ration of fish apiece was their 
share but they are long suffering beasts and 
actually seemed thankful for the little that they 
got. As Bill was hitching up his team, Sate, 
his lead dog, caught his eye and his master’s 
heart went out to him. 

‘^Sate, you poor dum animule, you’ll get your 
fill o’ rations, I’m thinkin' when we hits our 
camp,” he told him as he gave him a couple of 
love pats on the head. 

“You’re all right, pard. You’re the goodest 
driver in all Alaska and I know it isn’t your 
fault that we’re starved out,” Sate said good- 


BACK TO THE HAUNTS OF MEN 219 

natii redly. At any rate he howled a couple of 
times cheerfully which was his way of saying 
it in short-hand dog-language. 

When Jack went into the cabin Eileen had 
taken her last leave of her sleeping father whose 
burial place she might never see again. 

‘‘WeTe all ready to go, Eileen,’^ he called 
cheerily. 

‘ ^ I am ready to go too, J ack, ^ ’ she said simply ; 

there is nothing for me to stay for now.” 

J ack picked her up and carried her out to his 
sled where he put her in her sleeping bag and 
tucked a lot of big fur robes around her. 

It was an hour or more before the night 
would fade into day, yet so bright gleamed the 
aurora borealis that it was easily hght enough 
to see to travel. Their whips cracked, the com- 
mands to mush were given to the teams, the 
bells jingled, but there was lacking the great 
vibrant joy that comes of living in the open 
which usually marked their going. The sleds 
were heavy with gold, but Eileen ^s daddy had 
been left behind and they were on the ragged 
edge of starvation. 

Even when they reached the tundra the sleds 
did not pull easily for they were overloaded and 


220 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


the dogs were weak from hunger so that instead 
of enjoying themselves racing along in the 
traces, gold had made them work-dogs with all 
that this hard term implies. 

Nor were the boys more kind to them because 
of the gold and hardship that had been thrust 
upon them. Rather they gave their orders in 
harsher tones and plied their whips harder and 
more often. The dogs well knew that there had 
been a great and sudden change in their lives 
and they laid it all to the girl who rode, when, 
according to their canine way of thinking, she 
by rights ought to and should have walked. 

And Eileen thought so too and she often asked 
the boys to let her walk with them that the loads 
might be made the lighter but they would not 
hear of it. Her little added weight made no 
difference, according to Jack, and besides, al- 
leged Bill, the dogs could -stand it for once, for 
never had huskies been taken care of better, 
done so little real work, or had sutfered less 
from hunger. 

It took them two -days and the best part of an- 
other one before they reached their camp and it 
was lucky for them that the time was not pro- 
longed for that noon they had drunk their last 


BACK TO THE HAUNTS OF MEN 221 


drop of tea, eaten the last crumb of biscuit and 
particle of pemmican, and given their dogs the 
last bite of fiah. So hungry had Bill become 
that he had marked out the dog he was going 
to kill to provide provender for them all, but 
fate was kind to the dog, and to Bill, for he 
was not called on to do this act of sabotage. 

When they at last got to their camp Bill was 
as good as his word and fed the dogs a dozen 
rations of fish and moosemeat and having 
downed this in as many gulps they began to 
show signs of life and decency again. Jack 
threw together a real meal, the first that Eileen 
had eaten in weeks, nay months, and oh, how 
good those Alaska strawberries tasted! They 
were indeed a delicious fruit. 

After the boys had gorged themselves they 
counted up their sacks of gold to make sure 
that none had escaped either by way of the door 
or up the chimney, and in their youthful ardor 
they were on the very verge of giving vent to 
their repressed feelings in true western style, 
aud whoop things up. But somehow they 
simply couldn’t do it with that frail, slip of a 
girl, weakened by months of misery and star- 
vation, and all of her own people gone out of 


222 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


her life forever, lying there on the bunk follow- 
ing their every movement. Once she smiled, 
ever so faintly, and the light of a new life was 
in her eyes and the peace of contentment was on 
her face. 

After policing up the cooking utensils and 
setting things to rights a bit they turned the 
cabin over to Eileen and built a snow igloo of 
goodly size just outside the door, for their own 
quarters. Now that the precious metal they 
had sought for so long and hard was theirs they 
were keen to start back to the haunts of men, but 
Eileen did not grow strong as rapidly as they 
had hoped for and there was naught else for 
them to do but stay. 

Then the question came up as to the safest 
way to get their winnings from their cabin in 
the Alaskan wilds back to the Atlantic sea- 
board and into the Empire Safe Deposit Com- 
pany's vault. Convoying a cargo of gold nug- 
gets, to say nothing of chaperoning a little Irish- 
Indian maid, from the almost unknown heart 
of this great sub-Arctic country, over rivers, sea 
and land and into the most thickly inhabited 
part of the world was, they realized, no small 
undertaking. 


BACK TO THE HAUNTS OF MEN 223 

‘‘There are two trails we can take to get to 
Seattle/^ began Jack. 

“One is the way we came interrupted 
Bill, “and the other — 

“Is for us to sled down the Big Black and 
Porcupine Kivers to Fort Ynkon, then take a 
Yukon River steamer to St. Michaels, over on 
Norton Sound, and from that place sail on a 
regular steamer that goes direct to Seattle.^’ 

‘ ‘ But that way is longer by a thousand miles, ’ ’ 
protested Bill. 

“I know it is but if we go to Circle City and 
then up the Yukon River to White Horse well 
have to cross over into Yukon Territory and the 
chances are well have to hand over a ten per 
cent tax on our hard-earned winnings to the 
Canadian Government; besides theyll be liable 
to make us do a lot of explaining as to where we 
got it from, and I hold it’s nobody’s business. 
Get me?” 

Bill batted his eyes. 

“Afore I’d pay a nickel tax on our dust I’d 
drive over to the North Pole and go around by 
the way of Greenland,” was his emphatic re- 
joinder. 

Now there are a lot of terse phrases such as 


224 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

‘^nothing succeeds like success,’’ fool and his 
money are soon parted,” et cetera, and another 
might be to say that nothing makes most fellows 
so stingy as coming into possession of a 
fortune, for it was evident that these usually 
over-generous boys had ‘lightened up” since 
this golden manna had risen from the pit where 
it was cached in such a strange manner. They 
were, as Bill expressed it fools for luck.” 

Eileen was not progressing as fast as they 
thought she would though she improved slowly 
and surely. Good food, the best care, cheerful 
companionship and strong arms to look after 
her every want had made a wondrous change in 
this frail little girl who had dropped to the 
floor from exhaustion only a fortnight before. 
One thing was sure, however miserly the boys 
had grown in their minds, they took a tremen- 
dous interest in this silent half-breed child 
whose father had been the means of making 
them as rich as the richest caliph and that, you 
will allow, is pretty rich. 

Eileen in turn recognized in them messengers 
sent by the Great Spirit who had saved her 
life, and as she watched them go about their 
work, heard them talk of their plans, and what 


BACK TO THE HAUNTS OF MEN 225 

they would do with and for her when they got 
home, she knew they were, like the nuggets in 
the sacks, twenty-four carats fine. 

At first she couldn’t quite make Bill out, espec- 
ially when he smiled, for the very emotion that 
nature intended a smile to represent, that ter- 
rible scar across his cheek gave the opposite ap- 
pearance. Sometimes Eileen would look at him 
so curiously that Jack thought perhaps, she 
might be a little afraid of him, so one day while 
Bill was out getting some wood Jack told her 
how he came by that scar and the kind of a fel- 
low he was as a friend and a fighter. 

Came that day when all agreed that Eileen 
could safely make the sled trip down to Fort 
Yukon and, indeed, it was high time, for spring 
was fast coming on and this meant that the 
snow would melt, the ice grow thin and rotten 
and the bottom drop out of the trail at any 
moment. 

So again the gold and the girl were loaded 
on the sleds and the long awaited start back 
home was made— a journey of some six thou- 
sand miles. Many things can happen in mak- 
ing a trip of even less length, aye, and did hap- 
pen as you shall presently see. 


226 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


It was not often that the dogs got into any 
very serious fights but there had been bad blood 
between Eileen ^is Indian dogs and Jack^s and 
BilPs dogs from the time they first met and 
they would have discarded the Indian dogs long 
before but as each team was short a dog and 
the two scrubs, as Bill called them, could haul 
their full share, they kept them. 

At the first camp they made, going down the 
Big Black River, Link one of the Indian dogs 
and Dave, of Jack’s team, got into a fight over 
so small a thing as a piece of fish that neither of 
them had, and before the boys could separate 
them Link lay very close to the edge of the 
world next to come. It was a calamity that this 
fight should have happened a day after instead 
of a week before they started for it proved to 
be the most costly dog-fight that was ever pulled 
off anywhere, bar none. 

Bill was for leaving the dog and going on but 
Jack said it was best to stay in camp for a few 
days and let Link’s wound’s heal, for they had 
great need of him as both sleds were loaded to 
the guards and it was all that a full team of 
seven dogs each could haul. Then again Jack 
had conscientious scruples against shooting the 


BACK TO THE HAUNTS OF MEN 227 

dog or turning him loose in the wilds. (Perhaps 
because Link belonged to Eileen). But before 
Link was whole again another seven days had 
slipped by and spring was pressing winter hard 
for first place. 

The days were getting longer and so warm 
that their thick fur clothing was quite uncom- 
fortable and they must needs change into their 
mackinaws. The melting snow and running 
water everywhere made sledding overland out 
of the question but the trail was still holding 
on the river though here and there holes ap- 
peared and cracks separated the more solid 
stretches of ice. Time was up and they must 
push on. 

Jack took the lead as he had Eileen on his 
sled and BilPs outfit came on a little ways be- 
hind. Another day’s march and they came to 
some rapids where the air holes were larger and 
the ice bent under the weight of their treasure. 
Jack was ahead of his team picking the way 
across the treacherous trail when all of a sudden 
Bill let out a blood-curdling yell of the Apaclie 
variety, and on looking back he and Eileen saw 
that he and his sled and Jinx, the wheel dog had 
gone through the ice while Sate and the rest of 


228 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


the team were straining every muscle to the 
breaking limit to keep from being dragged down 
into the icy waters behind them. The pole that 
Bill had taken the precaution to carry saved 
him from going under but try as he would he 
could not get out. 

Running back at top speed Jack had the situa- 
tion sized up long before he reached the scene 
of disaster. When he was within a dozen feet 
of the team he made a mighty slide, as a man 
sliding for home with three on bases,, and 
drawing his hunting knife from its sheath at 
the same time, the instant he came alongside 
the last dog he cut the traces. Relieved of the 
mighty weight so suddenly the team fell head- 
long forward and sprawled about on the ice; 
at the same moment the sled, with over half of 
the moosehide sacks of gold on it, and Jinx, the 
wheel dog, dropped to the bottom of the river. 
Jack then helped Bill out and on getting back 
to the former ^s team they made an air line for 
the shore. 

It would add nothing to the gayety of the 
world to relate what Jack said to Bill and Bill 
said to Jack and what both of them said about 
the loss of their vast fortune so soon after they 


BACK TO THE HAUNTS OF MEN 229 

had found it. Eileen was the peace maker and 
she told them they still had enough gold to keep 
them forever and ever (she had never lived in 
New York) and that the loss of the gold mat- 
tered not a whit as long as Bill had been saved. 
And both of the boys came to think that she had 
the right view of it at that. 

The result of the dreadful mishap was a pow- 
wow in which it was resolved first, that they 
couldn’t atford to take any further chances on 
the last ice with either Eileen or the remainder 
of their treasure, second, that spring was al- 
together too far advanced to make any further 
attempt to get to Fort Yukon with their re- 
maining sled, and third, that they must mark 
the spot where the gold went down so that they 
could recover it when conditions were more 
favorable. 

‘‘The only thing for us to do now,” declared 
Jack, “is to camp right here until the first water 
and then build a boat or a raft and float on down 
to Fort Yukon, which is some seventy miles 
from here. In the meantime we’ll build up a 
cairn of rocks on each side of the river and in a 
line with the sunken yellow stuff so that when 
we do come back we’ll know right where it is.” 


230 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

‘‘An’ one good thing no one else ’nil ever 
guess out where it i»,” philosophized Bill. 

The boys made a fairly comfortable camp and 
set about building a raft of spruce logs which 
they lashed together with rawhide thongs. 
When this was done and they could get across 
the river they built up a great pile of rocks on 
either side of it but well back from the shore. 
Before another moon rolled round they were 
ready to make a fresh start down the river. 

“What about these huskies here;” asked 
Bill, who aways kept liis weather-eye open 
for the welfare of their dogs even though they 
didn’t have any more use for them. 

“We’ll turn them loose and they’ll follow us 
along the shore all right,” replied Jack, and so 
that little matter was settled. 

They loaded the remaining sacks of gold, their 
outfit and provisions, of which precious little 
was left, onto the raft. In the middle they had 
built up a platform of saplings for Eileen to sit 
on to the thoughtful end that when the raft 
struck the rapids and took a notion to dive, like 
a submarine, the water would not wash over and 
wet her. 

Then Eileen took her seat on the platform. 


BACK TO THE HAUNTS OF MEN 231 

Jack stood on the front end and Bill on the 
diagonal corner of the rear end and with their 
long poles they pushed their treasure float otf 
shore. As Jack had said, the huskies followed 
them and they kept as close to the edge of the 
river as they could, barking and howling fur- 
iously as they ran along. 

It took very little effort on the part of the 
boys to steer the raft and none at all to keep it 
moving as the current was augmented all along 
by rivulets and streams from the melting snows. 
Where the river was wide and the water shallow 
the raft sailed gently along but where the chan- 
nel was narrow the boys had to do some tall 
maneuvering to keep it from getting swamped. 

The rapids, of which there were many, were 
their despair. When the ungainly craft struck 
these eddying currents it pitched and rolled 
about like a piece of cork and the little crew had 
to hang on to it for dear life. In this exciting 
fashion they covered the rest of the distance 
down the Big Black Kiver. Just before they 
came to the mouth where it empties into the 
Porcupine Eiver the bed made a sharp descent 
and the water rushed down it in a piighty 
torrent. 


232 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 


There was a bend in the river ahead of them 
and this too they successfully navigated, but a 
rock, that projected out of the water, and which 
was directly in their course, proved their undo- 
ing. Jack managed to get his pole on it 
land brought all of his strength to bear to 
keep the raft clear of it, but the weight and the 
momentum were too great and a corner struck 
it with such force that Eileen and the boys were 
thrown bodily into the water. 

It was well for them that they were good 
swimmers and after a struggle with the swift 
current all of them landed on the shore like bags 
of wet rags. Then the huskies covered with 
mud and rending the air with their vocal organs 
swarmed round them. 

Never in all his life had Jack felt more like 
crying. He could stand any kind of bodily pain 
but with all of their gold goue he suffered ex- 
quisite mental torture. Many a prospector in 
the early days had killed himself for less bad 
luck. Bill seemed to be not all there for he 
acted queerly and talked about the little ‘‘boi- 
dies’’ that were singing in the trees, the 
‘‘bloomin’ ” flowers that bloomed in the spring. 





‘THE UNGAINLY CRAFT PITCHED AND ROLLED ABOUT LIKE 

A PIECE OF CORK.” 


— I*agc 230 





BACK TO THE HAUNTS OF MEN 233 

and other like idiotic fancies that hadn’t any- 
thing to do with the case, tra, la. 

Eileen was the only one who had kept her 
wits about her. She reasoned with the boys, 
or at least she tried to; she told them how 
very, very, lucky they were in that for the 
second time none of them were drowned, and 
as for the gold it was a blessed good thing 
it was all gone, she said, for it only brought 
bad luck. 

Bill looked at her as she spoke these consoling 
words in a funny kind of way, as though he’d 
just got out of a merry-go-round and didn’t 
quite know where he was. 

^ ^ Eileen, ’ ’ he managed to say, blinking at her ; 
‘T wouldn’t even let a perliceman talk that way 
to me. If you was me pard. Jack here, I’d make 
you put up your dooks, see.” 

Eileen laughed as if either he, or what he had 
said, was a great joke, and what’s more, she 
laughed out loud — the first time since they had 
known her. Then Jack laughed, and Bill, not to 
be left out in the cold, joined them with his 
hearty guffaw. And there the three of them 
sat on a fallen tree, water soaked, bedraggled. 


234 jack HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

dead broLe and as miserable as possible, laugh- 
ing fit to kill. 

Having had experience in losing things, in- 
cluding a few mere sacks of gold and a lot of 
provisions when his sled went down, Bill had 
insisted before they embarked on their raft that 
they should each carry a day’s rations strapped 
to their backs. Building a big fire they dried 
their clothes and had their drop of tea and bit 
of pemmican and after that they felt much 
better, and quit laughing. 

The huskies fared very much a la Mother 
Hubbard’s dog, which is to say that the cup- 
board was bare and so the poor brutes had 
none, no, not even a piece of fish to eat. 

‘‘Well, one good thing,” said Bill, whose pem- 
mican had revived him again, “we won’t have 
to mark this blarsted spot where the last bit of 
our gold was dumped for I ’d know that rock if 
I saw it a thousand miles otf Fire Island. ’ ’ 

Jack and Eileen took a good look at the pro- 
jecting finger which wouldn’t get out of the way 
of their raft, and they agreed with Bill that it 
was a monument of misfortune which having 
once been run into could never be forgotten. 


BACK TO THE HAUNTS OF MEN 235 

As they were only twenty some odd miles 
from Fort Yukon these youngsters started out 
to walk there, or ‘‘hoof it^^ as Bill so inelegantly 
expressed it. They had not gone more than a 
couple of miles when they came upon — ^no, it 
couldn’t be, and yet there it was — their raft 
beached on the shore and on it there still re- 
mained three of the moosehide sacks of gold. 

As Jack had often told Bill conditions are 
largely a matter of mind and truly it seemed 
so. For see you now, when they first stumbled 
on the pit of gold in Carscadden’s cabin they 
were not nearly as elated as one would have 
thought they’d be. Then when they lost the 
sled load of gold, though they were still mil- 
lionaires, they were as sore at heart and 
mad at each other as they could be. When they 
lost all of their treasure and were dead-broke 
they laughed, and now having recovered three 
sacks of it they simply went wild with joy. Can 
you beat it ? 

It was a remarkable trio of youngsters that 
landed from their raft at Fort Yukon on that 
never-to-be-forgotten day in July. At any rate 
so said the inhabitants of that burg. Hoboes 


236 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

couldn^t have looked more disreputable. And 
the huskies were all there too, mean, lean and 
dog dirty. 

The crowd at the landing that gathered round 
this motley little group scarce knew what to 
make of it, they felt so sorry for these woe-be- 
gone ‘‘kids.’^ But when they saw Bill take two 
moosehide sacks filled with something that was 
tremendously heavy under his arms and Jack 
take another and third one on his shoulder, the 
half-breed girl trudging along between them and 
their teams of huskies sticking as close to them 
as they could get without being stepped on, their 
mute sorrow changed to open expressions of 
surprise. Here was something to talk about 
to the end of time. 

‘‘Moosehide sacks filled with gold! by jim- 
miny 1 ^ ’ blurted out an old timer. 

“An’ them kids found it where we couldn’t,” 
exclaimed another bitterly. 

And so on, and so on. 

They went over to the Crystal Hotel and while 
Bill stood guard over what was left of their 
treasure. Jack took Eileen across the street to 
the New York Emporium and there they out- 


BACK TO THE HAUNTS OF MEN 237 


fitted themselves and Bill for the trip down to 
St. Michaels. When they next appeared in pub- 
lic there had been a great transformation for 
Eileen was a brand new girl and Jack and Bill 
were almost themselves again. 

Eileen, as pretty as ever an Irish lass and an 
Indian maid blended into one could be, had her 
hair done up, wore a blue traveling dress, a 
sailor hat and, cross my criss cross, she had on 
stockings and shoes, which latter, let it be whis- 
pered, she would willingly have traded for a 
pair of old moccasins. 

The boys were clean, well groomed and had 
their hair cut. They wore real store clothes — 
all wool suits that looked as if the price tag on 
them had been marked up to ^7.65 from ^5.67. 
When they walked their shoes squeaked at ev- 
ery step hke a duck having its neck wrung. 
They were rich, genial and willing to talk on 
any subject they didn’t know anything about, 
but of the moosehide sacks filled with gold, they 
said never a word. 

Yet, with all their good humor the boys were 
ready to pull the triggers of their six-guns on 
the bat of an eyelid should any one get the idea 


238 JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER 

in his head that he was going to relieve them 
of their treasure. And they guarded Eileen 
with the same jealous care. 

A week^s run on the steamboat down the 
Yukon landed them at St. Michael, and once 
there they shipped their sacks of gold by ex- 
press through to New York City when a part of 
their great responsibility was lifted from their 
minds. In a month’s time Jack and Bill were 
back where they had started from, while Eileen 
was being petted and pampered by the swell- 
dom of Montclair. 


THE END 



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